


The River Between Us

by BeaArthurPendragon



Series: The Devil's Afterlife [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Adult Peter Parker, Angst, Bisexual Matt Murdock, Disability, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Guilt, Headcanon, Heartbreak, Hurt/Comfort, Jewish Character, Jewish Headcanons, Jewish Holidays, Jewish Peter Parker, Judaism, LGBTQ Character, M/M, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Nightmares, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smut, So much guilt, Sorry I Killed Off Most of The Defenders, Spideypool - Freeform, Wade Wilson Is Giving Away Free Hugs, spider-devil, spideydevil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 20:45:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16145177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaArthurPendragon/pseuds/BeaArthurPendragon
Summary: After a terrible injury at the hands of an anti-mutant terrorist named Hominus, Matt Murdock asks his boyfriend Peter Parker for a three-month trial separation so he can get used to his new life by himself. Peter doesn't take it very well.You don't necessarily have to read the previous story in this series to understand this one, but it helps.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I began this fic as an exercise to get to know Peter better in preparation for my next big work in this series, and lo and behold, it turned into a reasonably sized work of its own. This story coincides with Chapters 10-13 of His Heart is a Place of Safety but I think it can stand on its own.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bad day becomes a very, very bad night.

Leaving Matt alone on the roof was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. 

His first instinct was to simply ignore the request. It had been a terrible day, and Matt was in no state to make a decision about anything, much less a trial separation. Neither of them were. And yet, here they were: Matt had asked him to leave, and Peter had said yes.

That morning, Claire had confirmed that the bioweapon designed by the anti-mutant terrorist Hominus had permanently and irreversibly destroyed Matt’s powers. And he’d been the lucky one.

The call had come in June. Peter been up at the Avengers compound upstate since the end of May, locked down with the rest of the team in the war room as they tried to come up with a plan to deal with Hominus before he carried out his plan to neutralize every mutant in America.

An aide had walked in and whispered something to Maria Hill, who’d gone pale and nodded. Then she looked at Peter with an expression he couldn’t identify but knew was bad and said, “Phone.”

_Matt._ He knew it in his bones. He numbly followed the aide out of the war room and into the soundproof booth across the hall, where a secure hardwired phone sat on the table, blinking red.

_Peter,_ Karen had said, with a catch in his voice that had turned Peter’s blood to ice. _Matt’s hurt._

With an increasingly shaky voice, Karen explained that Matt and Jessica had discovered a lead on Hominus two days ago, the first lead anyone had gotten since Hominus began posting his threatening messages in the comments sections of random news stories on the _Bulletin_ website. That they’d followed it to a neon sign factory in Brooklyn, that they’d called in Luke, Danny, and Trish to raid the factory in the hopes of ending this once and for all, that Frank had been waiting with his sniper rifle on the roof next door as a last resort.

She told him that it had been a trap; that the tanks of weaponized gas had been rigged to blow as soon as they were moved, and they had. That Jessica, Luke, Danny, and Trish were dead. That Matt, who had been bringing the freight elevator down to the storage room when the tanks blew, had been the only survivor. That the elevator had protected him from the worst of the blast, but not the gas. That Matt was in a coma, in a makeshift ICU that Claire had set up in Karen and Frank’s spare bedroom. That Frank, Misty, and Colleen were on their way upstate with the bodies now so Dr. Cho could autopsy them.   

Colleen and Misty wanted to stay with the bodies of their men, wanted to stay and avenge them when the time came. But Frank had to go back—he had to protect Matt until he got better. Peter begged Frank to take him back to the city with him.

_I need to see him._

_No, kid. Claire’s looking after him. You can’t help him there. You help him here._

_How?_

_By catching this sonofabitch, Pete. By making him pay._

He didn’t realize that it would be another two months before they finally attacked Hominus and his militia at their compound in Vermont, that he would be camped out in the Green Mountains while SHIELD silently drilled through miles of granite so they could sneak into the compound from below.

(It had been a fool’s quest—the idea had been to take the militia by surprise, to avoid another Waco, but it hadn’t worked. Peter had been the one to capture Hominus, but the poetry of that justice turned into unadulterated horror as Hominus managed to wrestle one arm free before Peter could web him, and shoot himself in the head in Peter’s arms. That shot had served as a signal to the rest of his men, who were making their last stand in the compound courtyard, and in a matter of seconds his surviving 98 soldiers had followed their leader into the grave on the backs of their own bullets as well.)

That was the gruesome end of two months during which Peter was not by Matt’s side, during which Peter did not even understand the extent of Matt’s injury--they’d long ago agreed not to disclose any bad news during a mission, and Matt had kept his end of the bargain. So it wasn’t until he returned to New York that he understood how much damage the gas had done, or how thoroughly Matt had unwittingly come to depend on his powers even in his everyday life.

Finally, on this rainy late-August morning, two weeks after returning to New York, they learned what Matt was already beginning to suspect, and what Peter had refused to consider: Like the rest of the Defenders, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was dead.

But Matt Murdock was still alive.

The news had wrecked Peter, but Matt had taken it stoically, the way he took everything, simply setting his jaw against the grief and getting on with his day. He’d barely tolerated the hug Peter offered when they arrived home to face their new normal, breaking away almost immediately with a quick, abstracted kiss on the cheek to change into sweats and wrap his fists for his daily hour with the boxing bags hung in the alcove beneath the roof stairs. Then it was a few work emails followed by the next volume of the dumb spy novel he was slowly working his way through in order to retrain his desensitized fingertips to recognize Braille again.

Peter hovered on the margins as he had for the past ten days, unwilling to leave Matt alone in the apartment, unwilling to so much as leave the room he was in. He’d never seen Matt so lost in his own home, so uncertain with his steps, so reliant on his hands to locate everything, so afraid to go outside alone. Not even 30 years of performing sightlessness for nearly everyone he knew could fully prepare Matt for life as an ordinary blind man.

Peter knew—they both knew—that time and practice would eventually restore much of his confidence and independence, but enduring this painful meantime was proving harder than Peter thought it would be. It took all his self-control and more to keep himself from swooping in every time Matt struggled to find something or was about to bump into something—and even so, not a day had passed since their return to New York without Matt grumbling, “Stop helping me,” at least once. He’d tried to sublimate that urge to intervene over the last two weeks by flipping it around, inventing challenges for Matt to practice in the hopes of activating some shred of the powers they’d believed, until that morning, were simply dormant. It hadn’t worked, of course, but it at least gave Peter a way to feel like there was some way he could help.

Now he knew he could not. All he could do was be there for him, in whatever way Matt allowed him to be. But Matt would ask for nothing, he knew. It would be up to Peter to discover the boundaries, to work out the margin between interference and support.

Well, that was nothing new. Partnership had never come naturally to Matt—solitude was his default setting. There was no amount of love in the world that could undo the damage of his abandonment as a child, and Peter had always known he would have to be the one to locate the attachment points, to weld the links fast.

While Matt was studiously ignoring him, Peter busied himself with a long run on the treadmill, then tried to work on his debrief on the compound raid for SHIELD’s after-action report. But he could barely concentrate; his mind dragged ceaselessly back and forth like a rope in a dog’s mouth between his grief for Matt and the nightmare-inducing memory of Hominus’ head exploding less than a foot from his face. He could not stop wondering how Hominus and his militia had seemed to come out of nowhere, could not stop wondering what it was they’d missed, could not stop wondering whether they could have caught him before Matt ever set foot inside the neon sign factory in Brooklyn.

They spoke fewer than a dozen words all afternoon and none of them had anything to do with what had just happened that morning. But finally, well after sunset, Matt broke the silence by offering to make dinner. Matt had never been a particularly skilled cook and had not even attempted to try without his powers, and Peter understood that the offer came from a need to prove himself capable in spite of everything.

Peter watched Matt select a large pot, fill it with water, shake some salt into it, and set it on the burner to boil. He watched Matt locate the glass jar of dried pasta that stood on the counter near the stove and measure out a few handfuls of spaghetti. The only help he requested was to identify a jar of marinara in the pantry—before Hominus, he would have been able to smell the garlic through the glass—and Peter made a mental note to get Braille tags for all the food.

The pasta was overcooked and under-sauced, but they’d been too anxious that morning for breakfast and too sad that afternoon for lunch, and besides, there was wine. They finished a bottle with dinner and drank another on the roof. Peter asked Matt if he wanted to talk about it, but Matt had shaken his head. “Not today,” he’d said.

They’d tried to have sex again, and again, Matt couldn’t stay hard enough—his newly diminished sense of touch had left him too numb for even the most essential of pleasures. Peter had reassured him that it was all right, that they would figure it out, that it didn’t matter, but of course it mattered.

Four hours later, he’d asked Peter to move out.

_I need to figure out who I am now. Apart from Daredevil. Apart from you. I need to know that I can be okay by myself._

Three months, he’d asked for. Ninety days.

It made no sense.

But Peter had agreed, because some part of the devil still survived inside Matt, and the devil never backed down. Leaving the roof was the only way to end the standoff.

Leaving their home, though, was another matter.

Peter opened a beer and surveyed the apartment. Besides clothes, he’d really only need his camera bag, his computer, and his crate of spider gear. There was plenty of room in the Jeep for that. The larger question was whether he was actually going to go.

Matt was desperate for some control over his life, Peter knew that, but wasn’t it also his job, as a partner, to refuse to accept a terrible idea? Matt would be angry, of course, but what he wanted was insane, and needed to be discussed in daylight, over coffee, without the ripples of recent nightmares still boiling through their minds.

Right?

So Peter waited. He finished his beer. He paced the apartment. He took a long piss and considered putting on coffee, seeing as how it was nearly three a.m. and he knew Hominus wasn’t going to let him go back to sleep anyway.   

He waited and waited, but still, Matt did not return.

Peter’s spider-sense lay dormant, so he was pretty sure suicide was not on the menu. Accidents, however, were. There were places it was simply no longer safe for Matt to be, and that retaining wall at the edge of the roof where Peter had found him two hours ago, his favorite perch for scanning Hell’s Kitchen for trouble, was one of them.  

But was anywhere really safe for him anymore? Safety and independence were not the same thing—there were still a million ways he could do everything right and still get hurt. He could get hit by a car or fall into a construction hole or not realize that the pilot light had not lit the gas on the stove or somehow miss the edge of the platform on the subway. For that matter, anyone could just walk right up to him and assault him, and he’d have no idea he was in danger until the fist or knife or bullet touched him. Hominus had nearly killed him, and now anyone—anything—could. How could Peter possibly leave him alone?

That settled it. He’d stay. 

But Matt still didn’t come downstairs.

While he waited, he scrolled through his calendar on his phone to see what date was 90 days away—just in case—and realized with a start that it was exactly four years to the day since they’d met in their civilian lives, when Peter happened to be assigned to take Matt’s portrait for New York Magazine’s annual “25 New Yorkers Making a Difference” year-end feature. That portrait was the first Instagram photo he’d ever posted of Matt: _So honored to capture a portrait of a real New York City legend for New York Magazine, the man who brought the Kingpin down. #notallheroeswearcapes_

He’d had to wait until after the magazine came out to post it, and by then he had more than hero-worship on his mind. Because by then, the magazine had thrown its award gala, and Peter had somehow managed to charm Matt into joining him for a few drinks at the hotel bar downstairs from the ballroom, and learned firsthand how intoxicating, how deliciously sweet that slow, hesitating smile of Matt’s was.

The odds of them falling in love was astronomical, he knew. At 40, Matt had never sustained a relationship longer than a year, and he had never so much as dated a man before. Peter was 13 years younger, and aside from one high school boyfriend, had never dated anyone exclusively ever. There were secret identities to manage, unexplored sexualities to negotiate, ulterior motives governing their decisions to spend time together—it seemed impossible that any healthy relationship could have emerged from that much baggage.

Peter had nearly given up on him three times, wondering if he was just doomed to remain in Matt’s friendzone forever. But then Matt surprised him at his gallery opening—Matt, who even with his powers had no way to appreciate Peter’s art, had come to support him anyway. That was when he knew this was real.

And yet Peter and Matt had fallen into the kind of love you only see in movies—the kind of disgustingly adorable, sentence-finishing love that makes everyone who sees you together simultaneously hate you and want to be you. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did.

And it was not going to end tonight, goddammit.

But at some point, Peter realized what Matt was waiting for: the slam of the downstairs lobby door—a heavy industrial behemoth that shook their windows every time it closed. And Peter knew that he would stay up on the roof all night until he heard it.

 “You contrary sonfabitch,” Peter muttered, and finally began to pack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get your tissues, y'all: Peter is in for a bad few months. 
> 
> I'm [Bea Arthur Pendragon](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, too.


	2. Exile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter crashes with Tony.

Peter pulled into the Stark Tower garage an hour before dawn, waving his wrist in front of the sensor that would allow him access to the car elevator that would deliver both him and his vehicle to the secure two-story Avengers residence located just below Tony and Pepper’s penthouse. 

The residence was always staffed, of course, but no one lived there anymore—the year-rounders preferred the privacy of the compound upstate—so now it served as a secure pied-à-terre for any Avenger with business in the city. Which suited Peter just fine, because he couldn’t bear facing anyone else right now. The only person in the world he wanted right now was Matt, and Matt did not want him.  

He kind of wanted to die.

Instead, he handed his keys to the residence manager, Priya Jaffri, who took one look at Peter’s face and placed her hand on his shoulder with a wordless nod and a gentle squeeze before radioing down to the fleet manager to fetch the car.

He didn’t go to his suite, however. Instead, he left his bags in the common room and walked out onto the balcony. It wrapped all the way around the building, but this side faced south, and though he could not quite see their apartment building from there, it was enough to know that Matt was there, fifteen blocks away, that Peter could web his way from building to building to be by his side in half the time it took to drive.

He wondered if Matt was still on the roof, wondered what he would think when he came downstairs to find Peter gone. Matt was in pain, and the only way he would allow Peter to console him was to make him leave. Did it help? Or was it a terrible mistake? Had Peter failed a test? Was this a bluff Peter should have known better than to call? Should he have just given Matt more time to brood?

He knew he should try to sleep but didn’t dare—he had no reserves left in him to face another Hominus nightmare right now. Instead he made a circuit of the balcony, two circuits, three, pacing until the sun began to rise, his head ached with exhaustion, and his heart felt like a lead weight in his stomach.

When he completed his fifth circuit of the building, Priya was waiting for him.

“Please, Peter,” she said, opening the door to the common room. “Even you must rest.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I—” he shook his head. “I don’t know. I just can’t.”

“Then at least eat,” Priya said.

He tilted his head in agreement. He knew he could not circle the balcony forever. Food seemed like an adequate compromise.

He followed her to the kitchen, where she had laid out two table settings and handed him a large cup of black coffee. He sipped it gratefully, and helped himself to an orange while she chopped tomatoes, chiles, and onions and mixed them into turmeric-and-ginger scented eggs, then ladling the omelet mixture in large pools on the screaming hot griddle. While the eggs cooked, she fished out half a dozen warm chapatis from the oven where she had been keeping them warm.

“Sit, sit,” she chided, waving him toward the table. “It’s almost ready.”

There was no disobeying Priya when she was in full Indian-auntie mode—especially an Indian auntie who was also a trained SHIELD agent with at least one gun on her hip at all times. Now in her late fifties, Priya had run SHIELD safe houses from Oklahoma City to Ulan Bator and everywhere in between, and she’d shepherded agents through some of the hardest, most morally challenging missions in modern SHIELD history. She was still fit enough to go to war, but she’d spent enough time in the field for three lifetimes, and there were worse ways to wind down a career than running a luxury B&B for the Avengers.

His stomach was yowling now—between the hit of sugar from the orange and rich, spicy scent of Priya’s Mumbai home cooking, he was nearly delirious with hunger.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, placing his plate in front of him and taking the kitty-corner seat for herself so he would not have to look at her if he didn’t want to.

“No,” Peter said, not looking at her.

So instead, she let her food do the work. The heavy meal did exactly what comfort food was supposed to do—it smothered his emotions with fat and carbs and spice, and gave his roiling stomach something else to do besides spasm with anxiety. The chewing and swallowing loosened his jaw and neck and his shoulders began to follow suit. A hot shower started to sound good. And then perhaps bed.

* * *

This time, he managed to sleep four and a half hours before Hominus’ exploding head woke him—a new record by at least an hour or more. He showered again to wash the ghost of the terrorist’s blood and brains and bone from his chest and arms and face, and only then did he discover that while Priya was distracting him with breakfast, one of her little elves had already unpacked his clothes and stocked the suite’s little kitchenette.

He ate a banana and checked his messages while the coffee brewed. There was nothing from Matt, but after a moment’s debate, he sent a one-line text: _At Stark’s. Love you._

Matt did not respond, and he forced himself not to panic. _Don’t crowd him,_ he told himself. _He’ll come around._

He sent one more text, this time to Karen: _I think Matt could use a friend right now._

_What’s wrong?_

_Ask him._

Then he did the one thing he knew how to do to quiet his own mind: He put on his sneakers and went for a run.

It was a hot late-August afternoon, but he didn’t care. He headed west to Riverside Park and made his way north, mile by mile, past the Upper West Side and Columbia and Grant’s Tomb and then up into West Harlem for a bit and then back onto the greenway around City College and on up past Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill and Washington Heights and on and on to Fort Tryon and Inwood until he finally reached the Spuyten Duyvil Creek dividing Manhattan and the Bronx before turning around and heading back south. By the time he returned to Stark Tower, nearly three hours and 17 miles later, he was soaked with sweat, his legs ached, and his chest was heaving too hard for him to feel his heart endlessly cracking in two.

There was no sign of Priya when he arrived at the residence. He returned to his suite for what would be his third shower in 24 hours—and when he stepped out, AC/DC was blasting in the common room.

_Shit._

He took his time getting dressed, trying and failing to not check to see if Matt had replied to his message (nope), drinking about half a gallon of Gatorade and wolfing down an energy bar, an apple, and a handful of cashews until he began to feel human enough to face the interrogation he knew he was coming.

_Well, get it over with, then._

Peter found Tony sitting on the floor, two slices into a large carryout pizza and playing Super Mario Bros. Peter shut the music off, grabbed a slice, and glared at Tony, who tossed the controller aside and turned to look up at Peter. “Who fucked up, you or him?”

Peter shook his head and took his pizza to the sofa. “Neither,” he said between bites.

“Bullshit,” Tony said.

“Look, we saw Claire yesterday. The news was not good.” Peter shrugged. “Matt needed some space to process it.”

“How not good?”

“His mutation has been—shut off, somehow? The gas made his immune system attack and destroy it. It can’t be reversed.”

“So the gas really did work,” Tony mused.

“Yes, Tony, the gas really worked,” Peter said. “Obviously that’s the detail we care most about right now.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony said. “How is he?”

“You don’t care how he is,” Peter said blandly. It had been a mistake, coming here, he realized. Tony had never liked Matt. Well, no—he liked Matt well enough, but he hated that Matt had refused to comply with the Superhuman Registration Act until his relationship with Peter forced him to, that he believed the Sokovia Accords were unconstitutional, that he considered Tony’s Ultron AI and Hydra’s Project Insight little more than two sides of the same fascist coin. For a man who dedicated his life to the law, Tony once complained, Matt sure did have an anarchist streak. (Peter tried to point out that Matt had dedicated himself to justice, not laws, but Tony wasn’t budging. After that, they’d simply agreed to disagree.)

“I don’t care for his politics,” Tony said. “I do care—” he paused, rummaging for the words he knew he was supposed to say, “—that someone you love is hurt.”

“He’s sad, Tony,” Peter said. He hated confiding in Tony about Matt, but he needed his friend right now. “He’s scared. We both are. Forget never being able to put the mask on again, he has to relearn how to just—live. He’s got to learn how to read Braille again and walk with a cane again and cross the street without getting hit by a car and—everything.” _How to maintain an erection with only a quarter of the number of functioning nerve endings he used to have._ Peter wiped his eye and shook his head. “He doesn’t want me to see him like that, is what it comes down to.”

“So he kicked you out? And you let him? Is that even safe? He's still got a lot of enemies out there.”

“Jesus, Tony, I don’t know what the playbook for this is,” Peter said. “He said he needed to know he could take care of himself. He’s a grown man. He owns the apartment. We’re not married. Legally he can kick me out whenever he wants. What was I supposed to do?” Besides, Peter was fairly certain Matt's greatest enemy right now was himself. 

Tony didn’t answer, just stood up and walked to the south window. “How much time does he want?”

“Ninety days,” Peter said, his voice catching on the words. They had just gotten each other back after the most harrowing summer of their lives. The promise of that slow smile of Matt’s was what had gotten him through the siege. The promise of those strong arms around him as he slept. The sound of the lovingly condescending laugh he made whenever Peter made a terrible pun. He wasn’t sure how many more nightmares he could wake up to without Matt by his side.

“Well,” Tony said, nodding toward the sun low in the sky. “Just 89 to go.”

Peter made a grunt of assent that came out as a sob. Tony whirled around at the sound, and, closing the distance between them in six long strides, gathered Peter into a hug.

“I know, kiddo,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up, y'all. Peter's about to make some poor choices. 
> 
> I'm [Bea Arthur Pendragon](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr too!


	3. September

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter has boundary issues, tells May everything, and reconnects with MJ.

He made it all of three days before he caved and let his daily run take him to the south, into Hell’s Kitchen. He told himself he was going to run along the river to the Battery, as he did most mornings, and he did. But on his way back, his feet took him, as he knew they would, straight to the corner of 10th and West 50th.

At least he’d had the presence of mind to leave his house keys at Stark Tower; he wasn’t sure, now that he was back, that he would have had the strength to walk away if he’d had the choice to go inside.

He crossed the street to get a better look into the top floor windows but there was nothing to see—the lights were out, which was no surprise.

Flapping the hem of his shirt to cool himself off, he began to walk in a semi-aimless loop around the building. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, exactly—he just felt an urge to secure the perimeter, and halfway down the block, he realized what was making his skin crawl: A black bulletproof Escalade with tinted windows and, he could tell, someone in the driver’s seat.

He casually walked past the car, phone in hand as if he were texting, although actually he had the front-facing camera open. He snapped a photo of the license plate just as he passed, and studied it as he walked. STRK 12.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he muttered. He spun around and walked back to the car, knocking irritably on the driver’s side window.

It rolled down to reveal a sheepish Happy Hogan.

“Why does Tony have a detail on Matt?” Peter asked. “Is he in danger?”

“Nope,” Happy said. “Tony’s orders. Peace of mind.”

Peter gave silent thanks to his asshole of a mentor. “Have you seen him? How does he look?”

“Sorry, kid,” Happy said. “I’m not stalking him for you. Just looking out for him. Reports are Tony’s eyes only.”

“Jesus, Happy,” Peter said. “I just need to know if he’s okay.”

“Are either of you really okay right now?” Happy asked. “He’s safe. I promise you.”

“Fuck you,” Peter muttered, slapping the roof of the car hard enough to hurt his hand and walking away.

He continued his loop around the block. There was nothing different about it, of course, but it seemed to bristle with menace now: low-mounted No Parking signs that could catch a man’s forehead if he accidentally walked too close, cracked and crooked paving stones that could catch and snap the tip of a cane, corrugated steel cellar doors left open, just waiting to be fallen into while shopkeepers signed for deliveries, little ankle-high fences surrounding the trees planted in squares of mulch every eight feet along the sidewalk, ready to trip the unsuspecting.

Whatever peace he’d managed to locate during his run was long gone now; now he was just anxious beyond reason. The idea that Matt would try to learn how to navigate this minefield by himself was insane—he wasn’t ready yet. How could he be ready yet? He knew _what_ he was supposed to do, but he had no idea _how_ to do it.

And then he heard the taps.

Matt had just come around the corner and was picking his way, slowly, up 51st Ave. directly toward him. Peter froze before remembering that Matt couldn’t know he was there, less than half a block away.

But he couldn’t move. After three days apart, Matt’s appearance shocked him anew—the 15 pounds he’d lost while he recovered from Hominus’ gas, the new gray that had perfused through his three-day beard, and his slow, uncertain gait threatened to swamp Peter in grief for what Matt had lost, for how vulnerable he had become.

So he stood, too gutted to move, and watched Matt work his way toward him. As he drew closer, he saw that Matt’s face was fixed in a tight-lipped scowl of intense concentration. He was counting his steps, Peter realized, memorizing the length of the block. He drifted a little to the left as he walked, as any right-handed person does without a fixed point to aim for, and his cane would often strike a stoop or a trash can or a fence. Sometimes he’d use his cane to map the margins of it, or else he’d lightly touch a gate or a lamppost to check his progress. It was a familiar street, after all—he knew what was here already. He just had to relearn how to recognize it.

Matt drew closer and closer and still Peter could not move. Twenty feet, a dozen, ten. Finally when Matt’s cane came within inches of Peter’s feet, he stepped back between two cars parked on the street to let him pass.

Matt gave no indication that he knew anyone was there. That made Peter worry all the more, want to reach out to him all the more.

But then Matt surprised him. Instead of turning left to continue up 9th Avenue, he turned right, and found the curb cut. He stopped and tilted his head to listen. There was no light at this intersection, which made Peter’s anxiety scream, but Matt was not in a hurry. He simply stood and listened. He listened to cars as they turned and cars as they drove straight through and cars as they idled, waiting for a break in the traffic. He listened to SUVs and buses and one limousine shaking with bass. He did not appear to hear the Tesla that whooshed silently past. He listened to a taxi pause for a fare and another stop to let one out. He listened to a box truck and a heavy diesel oil truck. He listened to two beat-up delivery bikes rattle by. He listened to a Vespa scooter. He listened even when there were no vehicles nearby to hear.

Matt had taught Peter how to read Braille—well tried to teach him, anyway. He’d managed to memorize the alphabet and numbers, but he never really could figure out how to read it with any fluency. _Learning Braille isn’t just about recognizing the dots that are there, it’s also about knowing which ones aren’t_.

Matt was not just listening for danger—he was training himself to recognize safety, too.

He stood on the corner for nearly quarter of an hour without moving. Just listening. And Peter stood fifteen feet away, watching.

Finally, when the coast cleared for the fifth or sixth time, Peter thought Matt might finally attempt to cross the street. He even took a step forward into the intersection. Not quite past the margin of the cars parked along the street, but his feet were touching asphalt. But just then, Peter’s spider-sense flared and a car turned directly in front of Matt.

Matt went pale as milk and jerked back as quickly as he could, stumbling a little on the curb cut as he scrambled back onto the sidewalk. His chest was heaving and his hands were shaking and he flinched at the sound of every vehicle that passed, even those on the other side of the street.

Peter balled his hands into fists to keep himself from leaping to Matt’s side, and after a minute or two, Matt managed to recover enough to continue his journey. But instead of trying to cross the street again, he simply turned the other way toward home.

* * *

Peter began to spend his days at an outdoor table at the Starbucks that had recently opened across the street from their apartment, his laptop open in front of him as though he were one of the city’s tens of thousands of freelancers who used coffee shops as their offices. This probably counted as a violation of their agreement—not that they’d actually agreed to anything except his moving out for 90 days—but he couldn’t shake the image of the visceral fear Matt had displayed when he tried to cross the street earlier in the week, or the knowledge that Happy Fucking Hogan had been parked all the way around the corner, too far away to do any good at all.

The table didn’t give him much of a view of the apartment itself—they lived on the top floor, and from his angle on the street he could only see bits of the ceiling and part of a bookcase. But once, briefly, he was able to glimpse Matt standing in front of it, reshelving one book and selecting another. But he could at least watch the door.

Matt was now taking two to three walks a day. Short ones, just around the block, never crossing the street—but he was beginning to mix up the direction and the time of day, and once he came home from around the corner with a paper bag from the sleazy liquor store up on 9th.

Peter’s heart sank a little at the size of the bag—there was a big bottle of something in there—but at least it meant Matt was able to manage some shopping by himself, right? Not that Peter was one to judge: Bourbon was the only way he could manage to hold his Hominus nightmares at bay long enough to get some decent sleep. Well, sleep anyway.

Matt looked like he was taking care of himself, at least. He seemed tired and anxious, to be sure, and his knuckles looked like he’d punched a wall at some point, but after those first few days he’d begun to shave again, if imperfectly, his hair was combed, his clothes neat and put-together. That was a good sign—Matt had always tried to compensate for the burn scars on his face by dressing well, even though time had faded most of them and his sunglasses concealed what remained. Peter had always wished he could somehow kiss away Matt’s self-consciousness, but at least his intact vanity meant he still cared about his place in the world. And that, Peter hoped, meant he intended to remain in it.

One day Peter noticed Matt was wearing the Adventure Time t-shirt he’d left behind in the laundry. It couldn’t have been a mistake—even though he’d lost enough weight to get it on without tearing it, it was still probably a size or two smaller than he knew Matt liked to wear. Inconveniently, Peter’s cock chose that moment to tell him how much it enjoyed Matt’s new middleweight physique, and how nicely the tight shirt highlighted it.

Did it mean he missed Peter, or was he just tired of the way his own shirts now hung shapelessly off of him? Or, he briefly wondered as he ticked through baseball stats to calm his lonely dick down, was Matt wearing it to tell Peter that he had somehow discovered his surveillance?

If he had, his poker face had gotten even better than Peter remembered it. Twice Matt stood on the corner, facing the Starbucks, facing Peter, studying the traffic but not crossing. On one of those occasions a middle-aged woman in a housekeeping uniform from the hotel around the corner approached him and appeared to offer to accompany him across the street.

 _Say yes_ , Peter willed. _It’s okay to ask for help at first. You have to start somewhere_.

But Matt just refused with a curt, “No, thank you,” and went back inside their apartment building.

The next day, a week after Matt kicked Peter out, the bulletproof Escalade pulled up and parked right in front of Peter’s perch, blocking his view.

Happy rolled down his window and waved.

“Park somewhere else,” Peter said.

“Nope,” Happy said, rolling down his own window and nodding toward the front door of their building. Peter raised up on his seat a little, just enough to see Karen coming around the corner carrying two armfuls of groceries. If Happy had arrived half a minute later, she would have spotted him. “You’re welcome.”

“Happy—”

But Happy just leaned across the console and popped the passenger door open. “Get in.”

“No.”

“Get in, or I’m calling Karen and telling her to look out the window.”

“Fuck you,” Peter said, snapping his laptop closed and gathering his things. He climbed sulkily into the SUV and slammed the door.

“I’m cutting you off, Parker,” Happy said, pulling onto 10th and turning right. “You know you aren’t going to get a second chance with this, right? The more you let yourself hover, the harder it’s going to be not to interfere.”

“Maybe someone needs to interfere,” Peter said. “He’s drinking too much.”

“Says the man rocking a hangover for the sixth day in a row,” Happy observed. “Neither one of you is coping particularly heroically, but that doesn’t mean either of you is in trouble. Grief is messy. Sometimes you just have to let it work itself out and clean up later.”

 “He needs help.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Happy said. “He’s been blind since before you were born, kid.”  
  
“Yeah, but he’s never been disabled before.”  
  
The word hung in the air between them like an unpinned grenade. There it was, then, the reality that he had been circling for weeks without ever looking directly at it. It didn’t diminish his love for Matt, or his desire for him—nothing, he knew now, could do that—but it broke his heart anew anyway. Because there was no exoskeleton, like Rhody’s, or bionic arm, like Misty’s, that could restore even a sliver of what he’d lost.  
  
And it was all Peter’s fault. He’d supported the Sokovia Accords—hell, he’d fought Cap and Bucky and all the rest for them. Up until now, he’d never regretted it. He and Matt had argued over them, of course, and he even agreed with Matt on certain points of the law that seemed unfair or at least poorly thought-out. But not the supersoldier ban, which prohibited Claire from finding some way to reactivate his mutation, or developing some kind of implants to restore his lost powers. Not until now, when it became a permanent, immovable wall that left Matt on one side and Daredevil trapped, unrecoverable, on the other.   
  
Finally he was able to name the cannonball of pain he’d been carrying around in his chest for the past seven days, whose weight he could only bear by taking care of Matt: Guilt. No wonder Matt wanted him to leave. No wonder Matt couldn’t bear to be near him anymore. Hominus hadn’t killed Daredevil—Peter had. And Tony, and T’challa, and Rhody, and Nat and Vision—they were the reason there was no way for the devil to return to Hell’s Kitchen. 

“No,” Happy said. “But if he does need help, he’s made it clear he doesn’t want yours.”

When he turned right again on 57th, Peter realized they were not returning to Stark Tower, and when they turned down into the Queens-Midtown tunnel, he understood where Happy was taking him. He stared out the window as they traveled through Long Island City, briefly glancing down Vernon Boulevard in the direction of his old apartment. Then on through the warehouse district and Sunnyside and the Jewish cemetery in Maspeth where his parents and Uncle Ben were buried before finally dropping into the dull, suburban enclave of Forest Hills, where he’d grown up.

Peter’s Jeep was parked outside Aunt May’s house, and as they pulled into the space behind it, Priya stepped out and popped open the tailgate to reveal his spider crate, camera bag, and suitcase.

“Oh, great. It’s a fucking conspiracy,” Peter grumbled.

“Keep your promise to him, Peter,” she said, tossing him the keys. “Give him his space. We’ll keep him safe in the meantime.”

* * *

May was still at work, Peter noted gratefully. He dropped his things in the den and jogged up the stairs to his old bedroom, a converted third-floor attic with its own bathroom and a fire escape that had allowed him to come and go as Spider-Man throughout high school without May knowing.

It was still very much as he’d left it at 18—May came up to air out the bed and dust once a month or so, but the shelves were still lined with Lego projects and tiny Dungeons and Dragons models. On the walls still hung curling posters—Hellboy and Lord of the Rings and the Matrix, though that one was mostly because of his teenage crush on Keanu—and his Harry Potter hardbacks still claimed pride of place on his bookshelf. Above them all, photos of his parents, photos of him with his parents, photos of him with Ben, photos from before his world ended for the first, but not the last, time.  

Suddenly he was walloped by a memory of Matt sitting on the twin bed and patting it with a sly grin. It was the night he’d brought Matt home to meet May for the first time, and Peter had given him a tour.

 _“So this is where all the magic happened in high school,” Matt had teased._

_Peter laughed ruefully. “This is where exactly zero magic happened.”_

_“We can fix that,” Matt said, playfully swatting Peter’s ass._

And then suddenly everything went wrong: Peter’s skin began to crawl and Matt stood up and said “fire” and they were already on their way down the stairs before the smoke detector began to wail and fifteen terrifying seconds later they found May bursting through a smoke-filled kitchen to throw a flaming roast out into the back yard.

So instead of the white-tablecloth dinner May had planned, they ended up sitting on the front stoop eating takeout pizza and drinking the much-too-good-for-pizza Montepulciano Matt had brought for a host’s gift while the house aired out. It was better that way, anyway, Peter thought—Matt was the first serious boyfriend he’d ever brought home and any awkwardness any of them felt about it had burned away with the roast. Now that everything had already gone wrong, they were just loose and laughing, mostly at Peter’s expense as May regaled Matt with stories of his childhood.

He had noticed—and Matt had, too—how deftly she had managed to ask the expected questions about Matt’s childhood in ways that allowed him to answer obliquely. Peter had already warned her that his childhood had been a hard one, and that he might not want to talk about it, and she’d taken that to heart.

But Matt had not taken any of the conversational escape hatches May had offered. He spoke frankly but not bitterly about the chemical spill that had burned him, about growing up extremely poor with a single dad who got involved with the Irish mob to make enough money to pay for Matt’s medical bills, his father’s subsequent murder, about the skin grafts and surgeries he’d had to endure to heal his burns and reconstruct his eyelids and replace his irreparably damaged eyes with prosthetics, spending the next eight years in a children’s home because older kids with special needs were, he said delicately, harder to adopt.

_“It’s not a pretty story, I know, but I’m not ashamed of how I grew up,” he’d said, taking off his sunglasses and tucking them into the collar of his shirt. Peter’s mouth fell open—Matt hated the idea of strangers seeing his eyes. Then Matt had searched out his hand under the table—a gesture that was meant to be private, but which Peter could tell May saw plainly through the iron mesh of the tabletop. “It makes me appreciate everything I have now even more.”_

May later told Peter that was the moment she knew that Matt loved him. He wasn’t trying to impress her with how far he’d risen or manipulating her by making feel sorry for him or challenging her with his scars and his story to reject him—he was simply showing her that he wanted to be known and seen by her.

 “He wasn’t telling me all that just to satisfy my curiosity,” May told him later. “He was doing it to relieve you of the burden of keeping his secrets.”

But she hadn’t known—still didn’t know—how many more secrets there were.

* * *

“Peter?” May called from the entry hall. “I saw your car out front. Are you here?”

“In here, May,” Peter called from living room. He was sitting in the dark, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, scrolling through his phone and drinking a beer.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

“Okay if I stay here for a while?” Peter asked hoarsely.

“Of course, sweetheart,” she said. She switched on a lamp, throwing Peter’s tearstained face into sharp relief. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t talk about it,” he said miserably.

“Is it Matt?”

Suddenly Peter was fifteen again, sitting in the exact same position on the exact same sofa, his heart scrambling like a trapped animal in his chest trying to force its way out through his throat as he struggled to articulate the words to tell her he was gay. His voice had choked so badly he’d had to repeat himself three times before she understood what he was saying. 

Fifteen years ago she had taken the news with a teary smile and the hardest hug of his life.

_“Are you mad?” he’d asked._

_“Of course not, sweetheart,” she’d said. “I love you and I’m so, so proud of you.”_

_“For what?”_

_“For being brave enough to tell me who you are,” she’d said, rocking back and touching his cheek, and then his heart. “You can always talk to me, Peter—you know that, right? I’m always going to be here for you.”_

_“Can you keep it secret?” he’d asked. “I don’t know who else I want to know yet.”_

_She’d hugged him again. “Of course, sweetheart.”_

Nine days later, the Hulk tore up half of Harlem—a night that had frozen the entire city with terror and left May as shaken and sleepless as she had been after 9/11. Three weeks after that, Peter was bitten by a radioactive spider during a tour of Stark Labs. Two days after that he began to realize what it had done to him. The city was seething with so much anti-mutant energy by then that Peter knew it wasn’t safe for him to tell anyone what had happened to him—not even Aunt May. Not because he was afraid of what she might do to him, but because he was afraid of what others would do to her if they found out she was harboring one of _them._

He could have hidden his powers, of course. He probably should have. But he just couldn’t stand by when he had the power to help people.

The battle for Harlem was, in a way, what made Spider-Man who he was: Crimefighting was his way of making up for the damage the Hulk did, and his way of rehabilitating the public’s impression of mutants. Even if he didn’t dare reveal his identity, he needed the world to know that mutants weren’t all monsters. It was his version of _tikkun olam_ , as he’d learned in Hebrew school—his obligation as a Jew to repair the world.

Perhaps it worked—whether it was because of his work in Queens or just plain, old-fashioned time and healing—New York’s hatred for mutants began to burn out. For a time, anyway.

And then one very bad day, aliens began to pour out of the sky, and again, an entire neighborhood was destroyed, and any gratitude New York felt for the Avengers for saving them was quickly replaced by anger at the lives and livelihoods lost—indiscriminately, it seemed—in the battle.

May sat on the sofa next to him and rubbed his back, exactly as she had fifteen years before. “Peter, there’s nothing you can tell me that will make me stop loving you, you know that,” May said. “If you’re in some kind of trouble—”

_Can you keep it secret?_

_Of course, sweetheart._

He stood up and dragged his spider-crate over to the sofa. “I have something to show you.”

* * *

This time there were tears, but definitely no smile. May stood and walked to the window first, then out onto the tiny back deck—really just a landing large enough to accommodate a single Adirondack chair—that overlooked the narrow runway of a back yard.

After a few minutes, Peter followed her outside. “You have every right to be angry with me,” he said.

“I’m not angry, I’m just—overwhelmed,” May said. She shot him a sidelong look and then shook her head. “Correction: I’m not angry _yet_. But right now all I can think about is Matt. I’m just so sad for him.”

“Don’t,” Peter said. “He doesn’t need pity.”

“Not pity. It breaks my heart that he’s trying to go through this alone,” May said. “But it doesn’t surprise me. Matt had to learn from a very young age how to take care of himself in ways no child should have to do. He needs to prove he can do it again.”

“He doesn’t need to prove anything to me,” Peter said.

“Not to you,” May said. “To himself.”

“I’m worried about him,” Peter said.

“So am I,” May said. She reached over and pushed a strand of hair off Peter’s brow. “But we can’t force people to let us in, no matter how much we wish they would.”

“I’m sorry I kept this from you,” Peter said. “I’m sorry _we_ kept this from you. It was my idea, by the way. Matt thought you should know.”

“Who else knows?”

“MJ,” Peter said. “Gwen. Wade. Ned. Some of Matt’s friends.”

May nodded, then shook her head.

“Are we okay?”

“Of course, sweetheart,” she said, mock-punching his arm. “Just don’t ever lie to me again, okay?”

“There will be things I can’t tell you,” he said.

“I understand that,” she said. “But just—tell me you can’t tell me, okay? No more lies.”

“No more lies,” Peter said. “I promise.”

* * *

If there was one good thing about his exile to Queens, it meant he was closer to MJ and Gwen, who lived upstairs from the small gay bar they owned in Bushwick.

MJ didn’t see him come in at first, and for a few moments he simply stood near the door, watching her work. Now magnificently butch in a flannel shirt tucked into jeans rolled neatly over a pair of brown Blundstones like a hipster lumberjack, it was becoming harder and harder to recognize in her the teenager who starved and flat-ironed herself into the image of thin, willowy femininity her parents demanded, as if by making herself attractive to boys she might, somehow, learn to become attracted to them in return.

It wasn’t until college, when they got an apartment together their junior year, that she finally began to disentangle herself from her parents’ shame over her. The hair was the first to go—cropped into a tight, burgundy pixie—followed shortly by the makeup she so hated. She began to borrow Peter’s clothes, but as she gradually began to allow herself to eat properly for the first time since seventh grade she outgrew them. Taking her shopping for new clothes had been fun—she had never let herself consider what she wanted to wear before, only what she was expected to wear. It turned out that after a lifetime of ruffles and bows, she was quite the minimalist, craving plain, tailored things that straightened her lines and called attention to her six-foot height.

They’d returned to Forest Hills for Thanksgiving together, Peter’s hand wrapped tightly around hers for nearly an hour as the subway bore them away from Manhattan and deep into Queens. She’d never told them she was a lesbian but she was pretty sure she knew—they were canny about picking up which girls were her friends and which were something else, because they were always the ones she wasn’t allowed to have over, or go out with. Peter was _persona non grata_ with them too—his gayness had been unmissable since adolescence, and the Watsons had long ago declared him a “bad influence” and forbidden them to spend time together—not that it had worked.

Peter had stood on his porch as she climbed the stairs to hers next door. It was a mild November and she shucked her coat before she knocked, so they could see her new look in full: A black tweed blazer and white oxford shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, freshly trimmed hair spiked just so.

She’d turned to Peter then with a panicked look. _How do I look?_ She mouthed.

 _Like you_ , he’d replied, and blew her a kiss.

She took a breath and even though she had a key, she knocked.

It went worse than even they had imagined. Her father opened the door, and though Peter couldn’t see his face, the way the blood drained from MJ’s told him all he needed to know about his reaction. Peter heard him call MJ’s mother to the door, and she burst out crying. And then her father asked a question that Peter would never forgive him for: _What ARE you?_

What, not who. It wasn’t lost on MJ, either, and she began to cry. _I’m still me, Daddy. Mary Jane._

And then the final cut, from her mother: _No, you’re not._

Peter flew down his porch stairs and hurdled over the low brick wall that divided their front yards. He had just made it to the bottom of MJ’s stairs when Mr. Watson spotted him, snarled, _This is all YOUR fault_ , and slammed the door in her face. Peter took the stairs two at a time to her, bundled her coat around her and hurried her around to his house. He and May consoled her as best they could, though there was little consolation to be had that night. He’d meant to stay with May that night, but he’d taken MJ back to their apartment instead, where they got trashed on cheap vodka left over from a Halloween party and collapsed together into her bed where she cried herself to sleep in his arms.

Four weeks later, on the first day of Christmas break, May showed up outside their apartment with a car full of boxes. She’d gone over to the Watsons, barreled her way into the house, and cleaned out MJ’s room. May and Peter spent nearly a week helping her go through her childhood things, selecting which items she wanted to keep in the apartment and which ones May would store at her house until MJ had more space for the rest. _You’ll always have a home with me_ , May had told her. And indeed, even now, some of those boxes were still in the closet of May’s guest room.

MJ was drying a pint glass when she spotted him, and this is how she froze, a rag in one hand and a glass in the other, eyes wide behind her horn-rimmed glasses, mouth open in a surprised O. Peter gave a wry smile and raised his hand in greeting. He had not called her once during the siege, and he hadn’t called when he got back, which meant all MJ knew was what had been in the newspaper: that the Avengers had successfully taken out the terrorist militia that had killed most of the Defenders, and that Daredevil was missing and presumed dead. It meant she didn’t know Matt was alive, or safe at home, or how badly he’d been hurt.

She dropped the glass back into the dish bucket, ignoring the shatter, and barreled around the bar toward him with a speed that surprised him. He stepped gratefully into her hug, wanting to fold himself entirely into the warm envelope of his best friend’s arms. The touch of her made him cry—hell, everything was making him cry right now—and she just kissed the side of his head and held him tight until he could pull himself together again.

“Asshole,” she said. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Any news about Matt?”

Peter nodded miserably. “Do you have some time to sit?”

MJ glanced over at the bar to Juan, the other bartender, and waved at him for a bottle of bourbon and two glasses as she guided Peter to a quiet booth in the back.

He told her everything that night, even the things he would not tell Tony or May about—about Matt, yes, but also about the nightmares, how he could still remember in agonizing detail the feeling of Hominus’ body go rigid and then slack in his arms that night in Vermont, how he could not look at a crowd of people without remembering the sight of 98 men in a muddy courtyard simultaneously committing suicide rather than allow themselves to be captured by mutants.

By the time he was done, it was MJ who was crying. She took his hands in hers and kissed them. “I wish you would stop, Peter,” she said. “I know what you do makes the world a better place, but has it occurred to you that maybe the cost is too high?”

Peter looked at her grimly. “It costs what it costs,” he said. “We always knew we’d be doing this till it killed us.”

MJ paled a little—he had articulated a thing that they’d both always known but had never directly acknowledged: He would die in his suit one day, not in his bed, and that day would likely come much sooner for him than it would for her. Or, now, for Matt.

“Do you think that’s part of why he’s pushing you away? Because he realizes that he’s probably going to outlive you now?” MJ asked, though the question audibly choked her. Peter was 30 years old, in peak physical condition, and his armor was state of the art. He knew that to her, his death should be as remote as the moon.

Peter shrugged. “I don’t think he’s thinking that far ahead yet,” he said.

“While you, Captain Catastrophe, can’t _stop_ thinking about it,” she said.

He smiled a little at this, the first time he’d smiled since June, it felt like.

“But maybe you should,” she went on. “What was it his doctor said? ‘Don’t lose hope but don’t forget to live in the meantime either?’”

_I’d never tell anyone to live without hope. A year or five from now, who knows? Maybe the laws will change and the science will advance. But don’t forget to live in the meantime, you know?_

“Yeah.”

“It’s good advice, Petey,” she said. “You should take it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love new Tumblr frenz--I'm [Bea Arthur Pendragon](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/) there, too!


	4. Days of Awe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In my headcanon, Peter is Jewish (like me!) because I always wanted a marquee-level Jewish superhero. So this chapter explores some Jewish themes pretty explicitly. 
> 
> The Days of Awe are the ten days between Rosh Hoshanah (the new year) and Yom Kippur (the day of atonement), which are the holiest days of the year in the Jewish liturgical calendar and always come in autumn. These are explained more in the text but if there's anything that you don't understand, please ask! I am very happy to answer questions. :)

Knowing Peter was Spider-Man and knowing he was operating out of her house were two different things. May never asked how he spent his nights, but there was no escaping the fact that his bathroom was now stuffed with antiseptics and gauze and tape, or that a mini-fridge had appeared filled with ice packs and sports drinks.

The work was good for him, though. It had been a long time since he’d been active in Queens, and he’d forgotten how punishingly huge it was—almost five times as large as Manhattan, more than 100 square miles of territory to cover. It meant he was out till dawn most nights, and left him so physically depleted that he often fell asleep in his suit. (That was bad discipline, he knew—even though he locked his bedroom door every night, he knew better than to leave himself that vulnerable to discovery.)

But the reality was that he was becoming so sleep-deprived he was getting sloppy. His guilt over not being able to help Matt kept him from falling asleep, and once sleep finally came, Hominus continued his work as Peter’s ghastly alarm clock, dutifully blowing off his own face in Peter’s arms every day to wake him up just four or five hours later.

As exhausted as he was, he still ran at least seven or eight miles a day, though often he ran more—after all, when you’ve got mutant fitness, a troubled mind and too time on your hands, why not run for hours? Sometimes he’d take a photo assignment, something quick and stupid and easy and local, just enough to reassure his editors that he was still around, despite his long absence over the summer. But mostly he just ran.

Most days he’d grab a late lunch at MJ’s. The bar didn’t open until 4, but Gwen always got there around 2, and she was happy to make him a plate of whatever he wanted. He’d eat in the kitchen at her tiny corner desk (her chef’s table, she grandly called it), so they could talk while she prepped vegetables and mixed sauces and portioned out her _mise en place_ for the night’s meals. Gwen was a tiny, rotund blonde with a rockabilly ponytail and a habit of jabbing the air with her knife—the same Japanese rolled-steel chef’s knife tattooed on her forearm—to make a point.

MJ would often join them, though lately she was just drinking one of the disgusting protein smoothies one of her Crossfit buddies had gotten her into—some vomitous concoction of kale, coconut oil, almond butter, yogurt, and a bunch of other things that really should never be served in a glass, much less in a glass together.

“You need to eat food you can chew, too, you know,” Gwen would huff, and Peter would push his fries across the desk to MJ and she would eat them, dipping them into the smoothie the way she used to do with milkshakes in high school.

Sometimes he’d bring his camera, photograph them preparing for the night ahead of them. Being on the verge of losing Matt was waking old anxieties in him, old dragons hungry to hoard records and memories of everyone he’d ever loved in case the universe decided to snap its fingers and take them away from him again.

That was why for May’s birthday, Peter insisted on taking her portrait, her first since Ben died two decades ago.

This year May’s birthday happened to fall on Rosh Hoshanah, the Jewish New Year, and after temple services they decided to skip the large congregational luncheon they usually attended to go to a nearby park where they’d gone for picnics long ago, when Ben was still alive and Peter still young enough to have fun with them.

Fall was well upon them now, and the trees were breathtaking in autumn golds and reds. Warm colors had always suited May, with her chestnut hair and brown eyes, and they especially did so now with her summer freckles still copper across her nose.

Everyone thinks of fall as a time of endings and the harbinger of winter’s cold, but Jews know that fall is the time when everything begins, that fall is when hope is highest. Fall is when the new year starts, yes, but it also begins the Days of Awe—10 days in which Jews get right with God, as he explained it once to Matt, repaying old debts and seeking forgiveness of those they have wronged so they can, with a final fast on Yom Kippur, begin the coming year anew.

To Peter, fall was a phoenix, new life rising from the fire of the old, and this is what Peter wanted to capture when he took May’s portrait, wearing the gorgeous vintage rust tweed coat she’d had for as long as he could remember, framed by fire of the trees all around them.

 _Maybe this is how Matt sees her_ , he thought, framing a shot. Then he briefly closed his eyes and counted the seconds until the afterimage of the shot faded. _Or did._

He asked her questions about Ben as he shot—how they met, what their first date was like, what she loved most about him, how she liked best to remember him.

“With you,” she’d said immediately. She was looking at him but also past him, to the field where Ben and Peter would take their gloves and work on Peter’s pitching for hours on bright summer evenings. “He always wanted to be a father, and the two years he got to be yours were the happiest of his life.”

This was the photo he kept, that moment.

May had never been classically beautiful, but she had always been striking, and now, as if for the first time, he became conscious of her strength, too. Now 50—how young 50 seemed to him now that he was 30!—May had been barely Peter’s age now when she and Ben adopted him, and not much older than that when Ben was murdered. But she had survived it, and had been surviving it for almost 20 years.

He could survive three months. He could survive forever, if he had to.

He usually reserved his Instagram account for his photography work, but he was so proud of his aunt that he had to share one of his shots. _Happy birthday to the woman who raised me, my beautiful Aunt May, the strongest woman I know. #alwaysthereforme_

And then, late that evening, he kissed her good night, suited up, and went out into the night.

* * *

Every now and then Happy would text him a photo of Matt—leaving church, sitting in the window of the fussy French café where they got brunch most Sunday mornings, boarding an eastbound bus. Just a photo, no context, no explanation. They were not entirely reassuring images—he still seemed too thin, suffused with a kind of grim exhaustion, looking every one of his 44 years and more—but he was at least making progress. All Peter could hope was that eventually Matt would rack up enough achievements to make him realize that he still had something to offer the world.  

Peter’s circuit of Queens no longer exhausted him enough to mute Hominus, so he began ranging into Brooklyn, too. He avoided the Red Hook docks, where he’d first met Daredevil (not knowing he was Matt till much later), but otherwise he roamed freely around the borough, catching a coke dealer in Williamsburg and a few car thieves in Sunset Park, and a rapist in Prospect Heights and finding a lost toddler in Bensonhurst who had managed to wander away during a block party.

Other times he went down to Brighton Beach to check in on the Russians. Matt had driven them out of Hell’s Kitchen, but they were as active as ever here on their home turf, and there was always some wrongdoing to right.

Tonight, as he had been every night for the past week, he was parked on the roof across the street from a restaurant called Krasnye Odessa, a favorite haunt of Ivan Boyenko, an arms dealer who did a steady sex trafficking business on the side. There was no sign of Boyenko yet, but the night was young, and he usually got a late start.

But then something new happened: A pockmarked Russian hood with greased-back hair and a black leather bomber jacket 30 years out of date came storming out of the back door of the restaurant, having a quiet but obviously intensely angry conversation on his cellphone. Peter watched him with minimal interest—Russians were a passionate lot, and he easily could have been yelling at his wife, but when he got to the end of the alley, he waved once, then backed up to guide a black town car in past the restaurant’s dumpsters.

 _Who are you?_ Peter wondered, zooming in as far as he could with his suit’s camera and capturing a photo of him just as he stepped beneath a security light. _And what are you up to?_

The hood went to the driver’s side door and had a brief conversation, pointed to the other end of the alley, and then hopped in the car. As it pulled through the alley and out the other side, Peter flicked a tiny GPS tracker onto the roof of the car while he ran the plates through his suit’s computer.

The car was already on the Belt Parkway when the registration came back: It was an official vehicle of the Consulate of the People’s Republic of China.

 _Now what do you want with a Russian hood?_ Peter wondered. _Unless you’re not a hood at all._

The car was long gone but he knew where it was going; instead of fruitlessly trying to follow it on foot, he did what every good New Yorker did when they needed to get somewhere faster than they could drive: He made his way over to the Sheepshead Bay stop and dropped lightly onto the top of the Manhattan-bound Q train. He didn’t need to follow the car to know where it was going because he had run past its destination nearly every day for the past three years: The Chinese consulate was located in Hell’s Kitchen.

* * *

He rode all the way to Times Square before hopping off and webbing his way from rooftop to rooftop to the building overlooking the consulate. He arrived just in time to see the car pull up to the garage. That late at night, the security gate was down, but it opened at the sight of the car—no cardswipe necessary. Whoever this Russian was, someone was expecting him.

“You’re not going to ruin my op, are you, Parker?” Nat asked behind him.

“What does the Chinese government want with a Russian gangster?” Peter asked.

“He’s not a gangster,” Nat said. “He’s SVR. Illegal to boot. He’s not registered with any _rezidentura_ in the country.”

Peter nodded. “Fine. What does the Chinese government want with a Russian undercover spy?”

“That is an excellent question,” Nat said. “That you are not going to help me answer.”

“Like hell I’m not.”

 “You’re officially on leave. I couldn’t read you in even if I wanted to,” she said, fixing him with hard stare. “And I don’t want to.”

“Oh?”

She nodded toward the north. “I’m not an idiot, Parker. Your head’s not in the game. The target you’re really interested in is sitting in your apartment nine blocks uptown.”

“Matt’s fine,” Peter said, with a conviction he did not remotely have. “I want to know what this asshole is doing in my city.”

“Hate to break it to you, Parker,” Nat said, patting his back, “but there are a hell of a lot of spies operating in New York.”

“I know that, but—"

The fire of her taser bracelet coursed through his suit, leaving him collapsed and shaking uncontrollably on the rooftop before subsiding into near-paralysis. “Sorry, Parker,” she said, striding to the edge of the roof. “Varsity squad only on this one.”

And then she leapt off the roof into the night.

Nat was going into this fight loaded for bear—she’d used her highest nonlethal setting, and it was nearly half an hour before he could move again. He was lucky, he noted grimly, that he hadn’t shit himself.

He dragged himself to the edge of the roof and looked down, but there was no sign of life in the street or garage below.

Once he could trust himself to maneuver safely, he webbed across the street and worked his way around the building spiraling down the exterior floor by floor, listening through each window for anything that could indicate what was going on inside.

But by the time he got to the pavement he had to concede that whatever was going to happen there had already happened, that Nat and the Russian illegal and whoever else was involved was long gone.

_Fuck._

It was barely eleven o’clock at night. He was nine blocks from home. Matt was almost certainly still awake. His brain was screaming at him to stop, to get the hell out of Hell’s Kitchen before he ruined everything, but like an idiot he turned homeward anyway.

And then he realized why: The closer he got, the more his skin crawled.

_Matt’s in trouble._

He noted the Stark surveillance vehicle parked on 51st, with a perfect view of the apartment building’s front door. It wasn’t Happy’s car—STRK 14 belonged to Happy’s deputy, Siobhan. Rather than involve her, though, he skirted the SUV carefully and dropped lightly onto the roof.

The roof door had gotten stuck halfway open again, as it had been doing all summer, and Peter was able to slip inside and perch right at the top of the stairs. The lights were off, of course, but the latest ad on the digital billboard across the street was an especially bright one, and suffused the apartment with more than enough light for Peter to see what was happening.

Peter couldn’t identify any specific threat, but his nerves were about to jump out of his skin, so he knew he was where he was supposed to be. That had happened only once before, when he’d found Matt contemplating the point of his continuing existence on the edge of the roof five weeks ago. 

But this time was different, somehow. The nature of the threat was different, but Peter couldn’t figure out what, exactly, it was.

It was clear that Matt was angry about something. He was storming around the apartment, moving back and forth from the bookcase to other parts of the apartment, cursing under his breath, kicking at things he bumped into. It became clear that he was looking for something. He scanned the dining table with his fingers and then sent one of the chairs skittering, then ran his hands over the coffee table and knocked an ottoman on its side when that failed to produce the missing item. The sofa itself, perhaps, but that resulted only in a throw pillow living up to its name.

Finally he went back to the bookcase and began to methodically check the spine of each book on the third shelf. One was missing, Peter could tell, and Matt could too. When he reached the end of the shelf, he clenched his fists briefly, then checked the shelf again. Then he checked the shelf above and below. Then he checked the rest of the shelves even though it made no sense—because even with his powers at full force, Matt still could not tell one book from another without touching them, and that meant he had always been meticulous about keeping them in their proper order.

After he checked the last book in the bookcase, Matt stood up again and became very still. But the set of his shoulders and the clench of his jaw was enough to tell Peter he was not calm. This was incandescent rage.

_Oh, Matt, no._

Matt cursed, and punched the side of the bookcase with a vicious left hook before grabbing the top with his right hand and pulling it down completely with a howl that froze Peter’s heart. It was the shitty Ikea bookcase Matt had owned since college, and the cheap chipboard splintered easily on impact.

Matt lurched backward as the bookcase fell, barking his calf on the coffee table behind him. Matt felt his way to the sofa and collapsed with his head in his hands. His back shook a little, and Peter realized that he was trying desperately not to cry, trying to stuff his frustration back into a box that was no longer large enough to contain it.

He seemed even smaller than he had in Happy’s photos—he was wearing another one of Peter’s shirts, he realized, but he was thin enough now for it to fit properly. Matt was three inches taller than Peter, and ordinarily about 30 pounds heavier. Now it was barely 5. He’d stopped shaving again, Peter noticed, and both his shins were purpled with old bruises the same height as the coffee table.

A moment later, there was a loud pounding at the door.

“Murdock? Are you home? Is everything all right?”

It was Mr. DeRossa from downstairs. DeRossa was a retired Marine; Peter knew he would break the door down if nobody answered. He half-hoped he would—he didn’t want Matt to be alone like this. Maybe he could come in, help Matt find his book, help Matt clean up.

_Break it down, Mr. D._

But there was no such luck.

“Everything’s fine, Mr. D,” Matt called, forcing a laughing brightness into his voice that only Peter would recognize as false. He wiped his face and walked as quickly as he dared to the door to open it. “I was trying to get to a power outlet behind the bookcase and accidentally tipped it over,” he said. “I’m so sorry for the disturbance. It scared the hell out of me, too.”

“You want a hand cleaning it up?” Mr. D said. “With your, ah, friend being out of town and all—"

“No, I can handle it myself, thank you,” Matt said sternly, in what Peter clearly recognized as his _don’t-patronize-me-because-I’m-blind_ voice. Unfair, Peter thought, but effective.

“Hey, you got it, boss,” Mr. D said, chastened. “Call if you change your mind, okay?”

With Mr. DeRossa safely dispatched back downstairs, Matt moved back into view. But instead of tackling the bookcase, he went to the kitchen, barely missing the discarded throw pillow with his left foot, located a glass, and poured himself about five fingers of straight scotch. He drank half of it in a single swallow, then refilled the glass and took it back to the living area.

_Oh, Matt._

The crawling had begun to subside beneath Peter’s skin, but he couldn’t move. He remained on the stairs as Matt queued up a Bessie Smith record on his phone, docked it to the stereo, and sat on the windowsill, leaning his head against the glass. The pinks and whites of the billboard across the street played eerily across his face, rendering him simultaneously lurid and ghostlike, throwing both his scars and the dark circles under his eyes into sharp relief, glinting off the new gray in his beard and, Peter noticed for the first time, his hair.

Matt worked his way through his drink slowly but methodically, and Peter couldn’t tell if the discipline was intended to calm himself or simply to force himself to give the alcohol enough time to work.

Or, perhaps, it was his way of keeping what came next at bay for as long as he could. When he finally finished the scotch—throwing the glass back one last time to capture the last drops—he slid to the floor, his back against the wall, curled his knees up to his chest, and began to cry like Peter had never seen before.

It was a keening, gulping wail, not loud but demanding to the ear, filling the entire apartment with distress. He rocked a little as he wept, or else he’d shift his weight on his hands or cross his legs or pull one knee up to his chest but not the other, as if searching for some position where peace was possible, some configuration of his body that would give him some relief.

But he was inconsolable.

Peter rocked back out of his crouch and sat as well, perching on the top stair and drawing his knees to his chin, clutching his shins tightly to keep himself from flying down the stairs to help him. It was unbearable to see Matt like this, to see him like this and not help him, but he bore it somehow anyway, pulling up the front of his mask to wipe his own eyes, and then biting the side of his hand till he tasted blood to keep himself from crying too.

 _This is what you didn’t want me around to see._ The understanding crushed his chest; Peter could not breathe without pain knowing this.

After a little while, Peter realized Matt’s sobs had resolved into words, a mantra or a prayer he repeated over and over again:

“Help me. I need you.”

Who was he speaking to? God, probably, but Peter couldn’t prevent a little hope from flaring up anyway. _Say my name_ , he thought. _Say my name so I can help you. Please let me help you._

Instead he said, “I can’t do this, Pop. I can’t do this.”

Peter ached, remembering making the same petition over the years to his own dad, when he was trying to figure out how to come out, how to make sense of his new powers, how to face enemies his father wouldn’t have even had the language to understand. Thanos. Venom. Hominus.

It wasn’t about the book anymore, Peter knew. It had stopped being about the book the minute the bookcase hit the floor. It had probably never been about the book at all.

After a few more minutes of pleading for his father, Matt finally stopped. He sat perfectly still for a moment, then nodded once and moved to the sofa, where he curled up clutching a throw pillow to his chest, and closed his eyes.

Peter remained on the top stair until he was sure Matt was asleep. He moved silently down the stairs, and after pausing as long as he could by the sofa without touching him, he began to take an inventory of the apartment. First he moved to the shattered bookcase—he knew he couldn’t clean it up without being discovered, but he could at least sweep the stray splinters deeper into the pile, where Matt couldn’t step on them. Then into the kitchen, where he found the fridge was stocked and the dishes were clean. There was a large bottle of habanero sauce on the counter—Matt had been drowning his food in it now that he could only taste a quarter of what he could taste before, but it was clear not even that was enough to make him want to eat. In the bathroom, the towels were draped neatly on the rack and in the bedroom, the bed was made. There was a reasonable amount of laundry in the basket and his clothes were properly folded and hung. At least he—or possibly Karen—was keeping things in order.

On Matt’s nightstand lay a beer bottle, his rosary, and the missing book.

If Peter could not risk touching Matt, he could at least touch Matt’s things instead. He ran his fingers across the braille of the book and the tiny jet beads of the rosary and then finally picked up Matt’s pillow and held it to his chest, breathing deeply of the scent of the man he missed more than anything else in the world.

He glanced at the clock. It was a little after midnight—Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, the conclusion of the Days of Awe, would begin at sundown the next day, he realized.

 _Forgive me,_ he thought. _Forgive me for not catching him in time. Forgive me for the Sokovia Accords. Forgive me for the supersoldier ban. Forgive me for making it impossible to help you. Forgive me for leaving you like this._  

Every atom in his body wanted to stay until Matt woke. The storm, he knew, had blown over, but the full extent of the damage wouldn’t be clear until morning. But he had a promise to keep, this monstrous bargain he could not begin to understand why he had made, but he had to trust that Matt knew what he needed. He slipped back up the stairs, drawing the roof door closed, and fled into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, but wait, it gets worse for our hero. 
> 
> I'm [Bea Arthur Pendragon](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr too!


	5. October

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter makes a very bad decision. Of course it involves Wade Wilson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Rough sex.

The weeks wore on. Fall fell across the city, and Matt did not call. Neither did Peter. Happy texted a few more pictures of Matt walking around the neighborhood, but if anything there was even less to glean from them before because he was just walking with no clear destination in mind.

He took Nat’s advice and stayed away from Manhattan. He busted up a heroin ring in Ozone Park and nabbed an antiquities smuggler working in the freight terminal at JFK and helped quell a riot at Riker’s Island (and then, though he didn’t enjoy throwing his weight around as an Avenger, he used his position to call the mayor directly and yell at him for letting it get overcrowded in the first place). He rounded up bank robbers in Elmhurst and child pornographers in Middle Village and car thieves in Jackson Heights. He rescued six kids from a burning building in Kew Gardens and pulled a car out of a sinkhole in Woodside. He yanked a credit card skimmer off a gas pump in Ridgewood when he went to fill up the Jeep on his way to MJ’s.

Hominus continued with his relentless wake-up calls, though now Peter could begin to count on getting at least six hours in before Hominus blew up his head in Peter’s face again.

But even with more rest, the nightmare was no less vivid, and it was no less painful to wake up without Matt beside him to ground him back in the real world again. He’d thought it would get better with time, but it hadn’t, not really. If anything, it was worse. His terror did not understand that he and Matt were on a break, that there was no one to hold onto—or hold onto him—until his night sweats cooled and his breath slowed, which meant every morning brought some fresh grief. Peter was not sure how much more he could bear.

The beginnings of hope came a few days later, when Karen called while he was driving back to Queens from a late-afternoon meeting with a photo editor.

“I just wanted to let you know that Matt came back to work for half a day today,” she said.

“Does he know you’re calling me?”

“I don’t need his permission,” she said. “I’m your friend, too.”

“How is he?” Peter asked. His eyes were threatening tears but he was stuck in rush-hour traffic on the BQE and there was nowhere to turn off, so he pinched his thigh to help him keep from dissolving entirely.

Karen sighed. “Oh, you know,” she said.

“No, I don’t,” Peter said.

She paused for a long time. “He has good days and bad days,” she said finally. “Well, he’s starting to have some good days, anyway.”

“Was today one of them?”

“I think so,” Karen said.

“Is he—” Peter began, not sure if he wanted to finish the question. He did anyway. “Is he angry at me?”

“No,” Karen said, surprised. “Why?”

“For, I don’t know. Leaving. Signing the Sokovia Accords. Not catching Hominus before he could plant the bomb in the neon factory.”

“No,” Karen said. “Oh, no. He doesn’t blame you for any of it.”

“He should.”

“Oh, Peter,” Karen murmured. “I’m so sorry he’s putting you through this.”

“It’s not his fault.”

“It’s entirely his fault,” Karen said. “He’s just—you know how he gets. He’s like a wounded animal right now. If you try to get too close, he bites.”

“I wish I knew how to help him,” Peter said.

“You and me both,” Karen said. “You know who’s actually getting through to him, though? Misty. They talk a lot. He actually smiles every now and then, if you can believe it.”

“I guess she’s really the only one who knows what he’s going through,” Peter said.

 “And I think work will do him a lot of good. He’s still a great lawyer. I think once he remembers that he still has ways to help people, he’ll feel a little more—grounded, I guess?”

“I hope so,” Peter said.

“How are _you_?”

“Oh, you know,” Peter said. “Shitty.”

“Yeah,” Karen said. “Me too.”

* * *

He began to take more photography jobs—always local, mostly interiors of fancy apartments for the weekly real estate porn section of the paper, but it at least got him inside a Financial District penthouse owned by none other than Ivan Boyenko, whom Peter had been surveilling in Brooklyn the month before and whose minion had some mysterious relationship with the Chinese government. There was no sign of life—it was just another beautifully furnished shell acquired to launder dirty money—but at least he learned Boyenko had exquisite taste in post-impressionist art. In fact, the art was even more interesting than the apartment, because he could tell some were forgeries. They were excellent ones, but forgeries nonetheless, and he was fairly certain that if a skilled restorer with the right kind of solvent stripped away those forged brushstrokes, they might find a stolen painting or two beneath it.

He sent the beauty shots to the magazine. He sent the rest—the ones with a motion sensor here, a security camera there—to Nat with a one-line note: _A gift from the JV squad_.

The days grew colder and shorter and grayer as fall’s brilliance gave way to the chill of impending winter. The trees fell bare, the army of black coats came out of closets and storage bins, and, as if to combat the growing darkness of the year, the pumpkins began to come out.

He couldn’t say when he began to expect Matt to call, but at some point, he realized that he was operating under the assumption that their separation must be nearing a premature end. He knew how much it meant to Matt to return to work—the law was his calling, as much as Daredevil had been. Maybe even more. Now that he’d reclaimed that part of his life, it wouldn’t be long before he realized that there was still a fulfilling life ahead of him, with or without the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen beside him.

And once he could see that life ahead of him, Peter could come home and share it.

So why hadn’t he called?

* * *

Halloween fell on a Wednesday, but that didn’t matter because MJ and Gwen’s Hallow-Queen benefit for the Trevor Project waited for no weekend. The festivities began at sunset, when drag queens from across New York came to hand out candy and paint faces while Gwen oversaw a s’mores station for the kids and MJ and Juan served bright orange beers to the parents.

Peter came to give Gwen a hand with the s’mores, quickly settling into the rhythm of assembling the marshmallow skewers and showing the kids how to assemble the hot, sticky sandwiches.

“You’re good with kids,” Gwen observed.

“You want one? I’ll give you one,” Peter said, grinning. “My little swimmers are your little swimmers.”

“Wouldn’t that be fun?” Gwen asked. “We could share the kid. Now that Matt’s not going to be working nights anymore--”

Peter’s smile soured.

“Oh, fuck, I’m sorry,” Gwen said, squeezing his hand. “That was thoughtless.”

Peter didn’t respond, turning more attention than was required to prepping more marshmallow skewers.

“It’s not much longer, though, right?” Gwen asked.

“Three weeks,” Peter said, still not looking at her. “Or forever? Who knows?”

“It won’t be forever,” Gwen said.

“Yeah, you gonna promise that?” Peter asked shortly.

“He loves you,” Gwen said. “I can promise you that.”

“I’m starting to wonder whether that’s enough,” Peter said.

* * *

“Glad to see you still drink like a girl,” Wade said, dropping into the empty seat at the bar next to Peter before Peter had even clocked his presence. The kids’ party was long over by then, and the festivities had moved indoors for a live drag performance of Rocky Horror Picture Show, a costume contest and all manner of lurid, oversweet Halloween-themed drinks, including the bright purple demon daiquiris Peter was putting away with probably unwise alacrity.

Wade was, as he always was, unchanged and unaged—not that anyone could guess his age now, anyway. (For the record, he was 38.) He and Peter had hooked up throughout Peter’s early and mid-twenties, up until Peter met Matt, but it had never been a relationship in any sense of the word. Wade and Vanessa both freely took same-sex lovers on the side, and Wade kept coming back to Peter because sometimes even superheroes just needed to fuck someone they didn’t need to explain anything to. They hadn’t seen much of each other since Peter got together with Matt—boundaries weren’t Wade’s favorite thing—but they’d cross paths every now and then, text every now and then, and still considered each other friends.

“Thank you,” Peter said irritably. “In my experience, women almost always have better taste than men.”

“Says the man who has never experienced a woman in his life,” Wade said, waving for a beer. “Let me guess: You’re dressed up as a snowflake Millennial twinkerbell drowning his broken heart in an ocean of fruity frozen drinks.”

“And you’re, what? A bitter old cartoon villain on the hunt for drama?” Peter asked. “Why are you even here? You hate Halloween.”

“I heard my sweet baby boy was in distress. I thought you could use a friend,” Wade said. “Besides, Vanessa’s visiting an old girlfriend in Paris this week and I got bored.”

“I have friends, Wade.”

“Sexual healing, then?”

“Go away.”

Wade looked around the packed bar. “Well, there’s nowhere else to sit, so—”

Peter sighed. “Fine. Just—stay.” To be honest, he was glad to have someone familiar to sit with, even an old fuckbuddy—the memory of the mass suicide at Hominus’ compound was still photograph-fresh in his mind, and although he knew he had to rebuild a tolerance for crowds if he was ever going to survive in New York, they still made him uneasy.

“It’s cute, though, isn’t it?” Wade said. “The way you and I can just pick up old fights right where we left off no matter how much time has passed?”

Peter wordlessly clinked his glass against Wade’s beer.

“Nasty business up in Vermont,” Wade said. “You okay?”

“Nope.” Peter stirred his drink with his straw. “Matt’s alive, by the way—thanks for asking.”

“I would have asked,” Wade said petulantly. “Eventually.” Despite the deafening noise of the crowd, he leaned in so he and Peter couldn’t be overheard. He was so close his scent triggered an immediate and unwanted supercut in Peter’s mind of their greatest sexual escapades. He loved Matt more than life itself, but when it came to sex, there was no one in the world like Wade, and between the siege and Matt’s injury it had been nearly five months since he’d had a dick inside him. Peter crossed his legs and began counting toothpicks in the caddy on the bar in front of him to try to calm his shit down as Wade asked his question: “What happened?”

“Got hurt in the explosion, bad enough that he had to retire. Needed some space. Hence—” he gestured at the bar to say _that’s why I’m here instead of there_.

“I get that,” Wade said. “I didn’t want Vanessa to watch me get sick, and I was sure as hell she would never want to look at me after I went all Phantom of the Opera.” 

“And yet you could not have been more wrong both times, my friend,” Peter said, shifting his weight uncomfortably. _Jesus fucking Christ, penis, would you fucking behave already?_

“Yeah, well, toxic masculinity’s a real bitch,” Wade said, draining his beer. He pointed at Peter’s now-empty glass. “You want another one of those—whatevers?”

“No,” Peter said, looking directly at Wade for the first time. By now he was floating through a stewy fog of alcohol, loneliness, sleep deprivation, and hormones, mixed with an aching desire to shelter himself in another person’s arms, and Wade was there and he knew it was wrong but he had run out of gas and needed somewhere safe to land.

He reached over beneath the bar so MJ could not see him take Wade’s hand in his. “Let’s get out of here.”

* * *

“You want a beer or something?” Wade asked, dropping his keys on the table as they walked into his apartment.

“No,” Peter said, his balls aching with a need that matched the ache of regret he was already feeling in his chest.

“You sure you want to do this?” Wade asked.

Peter didn’t reply, just placed his hands on Wade’s shoulders and pushed him down onto his knees. Wade grinned and unbuckled Peter’s belt and pulled his pants down, taking Peter’s cock into his mouth without preamble.

When Peter was good and hard, he pushed Wade’s head away and pointed to the sofa. “Pants off,” he said.

“Oh, Petey, did Matt turn you into a top?” he asked. “Or do you think by doing it this way it doesn’t count as cheating?”

Peter didn’t answer, just pushed him toward the sofa, hard, with his knee. Wade was the best person to fuck when you weren’t interested in being gentle, because Wade was _never_ interested in gentle. He could feel little pain, after all, and there was never any risk of permanent damage. And more importantly, he loved it rough—the kind of rough where you couldn’t always tell if you were fighting or fucking. Which worked out, because Peter was in a bad, bad mood tonight, and he wanted to hit something.

Wade stood, grinned, and gave a little bow before spinning around to drop his pants and lean against the back of the sofa, wiggling his ass a little as an invitation. “Do your worst, Parker,” he said slyly.

Peter moved in behind him and began to work his spit-damp cock into Wade’s ass without bothering to stretch or lube him up. Wade gasped and grinned over his shoulder at Peter. “I like the new you,” he said.

“Yeah?” Peter said, beginning to thrust hard, feeling Wade’s muscles clench against him in surprise, pushing himself further in anyway.  He slapped Wade’s flank, hard enough to leave a bruise, if Wade had been able to bruise. “You like that?”

“I need you to beat the shit out of me,” Wade said, reaching around to grab Peter’s ass and push him further into his own.

“I’m going to make you scream,” Peter grunted, leaning over Wade’s back. He braced himself on one arm and threaded his other around to Wade’s chest and grabbed a nipple, pinching it hard, not letting go.

“Oh, fuck,” Wade groaned, his knees buckling slightly. “Harder.”

Peter leaned further over and sank his teeth into Wade’s earlobe, eliciting another groan, before biting into his neck.

Wade’s hips began to buck the harder Peter bit and pinched, and his breath began to hitch with pleasure every time Peter slapped him. As promised, he screamed, yes after yes after yes, and there was no pleasure in fucking him this way, not really, but Peter’s cock was responding as any cock would in a warm, snug place, and biology was biology and he needed to come and so he did, finally and joylessly.

“Jesus, Parker,” Wade murmured as Peter pulled himself out. “What the fuck was that?”

“Nothing,” Peter said, dragging his pants back up and walking into the bathroom to clean himself up. He forced himself to look at himself in the mirror, inventorying the two-day scruff on his chin, the dark circles beneath his eyes, the new worry lines that had etched themselves between his eyebrows, the rough, puffy pallor that was the constant gift of too little sleep and too much to drink. It was the face of a man who had just sold out the love of his life.

When he came back out, Wade was sprawled across the sofa in just his boxers, with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two glasses set out on the coffee table.

“You need a hug,” Wade said, pouring Peter a double measure and handing it to him. “A great big alcohol hug.”

Peter drained the glass in a single swallow and threw the glass against the wall.

“Well, that was festive,” Wade said dryly. “You want to talk about it?”

Peter shook his head, then sat heavily on the couch and began to cry.

“Oh, hell,” Wade said. He set his drink down and pulled Peter into his arms, kissing the top of his head. “This wasn’t real, Peter,” he said. “We don’t ever have to tell him. I mean it.”

“I really fucked up, Wade,” Peter sobbed.

“No, you didn’t,” Wade said. “You’re in an impossible position—it was inevitable.”

“It was totally evitable,” Peter said, sniffling.

“Now you’re just making up words.”

Now it all came out—not just the loss of Daredevil but the loss of so much sensation in every possible way, how he had to relearn how to read and taste and smell and fuck with just a quarter of the nerve endings he’d had before.

“So he’s impotent right now.”

“Not exactly. He says he’s just numb.”

“Well, shit,” Wade said.

“I just miss—” Peter said. “We haven’t really, you know, since before I left in June. We tried, after I got back but it didn’t really—work.”

“And you decided a hot mess like that was going to help?” Wade asked. “I don’t know Matt at all, but I’m pretty sure he’s not going to like—whatever the fuck that just was.” He drained his glass and refilled it. “Besides, you hate topping.”

“I don’t hate it,” Peter said. “It’s just not—”

“You hated that,” Wade said. “You hated every second of that.”

“Well, I love him,” Peter said reaching for Wade’s glass and taking a sip. “And I need to know I can still—that we still have options, just in case.”

“Not like that, you don’t,” Wade said. He disentangled himself from Peter’s arms and stood up. “Come with me,” he said, his hand out. “Let me help you.”

Peter followed Wade into the bedroom. Wade kissed gently but urgently, pulling him close so Peter could feel Wade’s cock growing hard against him. “Come to bed with me,” he repeated softly, kissing Peter lightly along his neck. “Let me help you.”

He allowed Wade to undress him and guide him down to the bed. Wade came up behind him, nosing between his buttocks, flicking his tongue against the sensitive skin between them, gently probing into his asshole. Peter sighed raggedly as Wade began to probe further with his fingers, first one then two then three, until Peter said “yes” and Wade kissed his shoulder and rolled onto his back so Peter could straddle him. They moved slowly together, eyes locked on one another, so slowly and tenderly that it felt like it lasted for hours until Wade came with a sweet sigh and Peter, for the second time that night, did too.

Afterward, he fell asleep more quickly than he had since returning home.

In the morning, Hominus exploded Peter awake again, this time with the added benefit of a screaming hangover. He rolled over to look at Wade in daylight, the early sun throwing the whorls and ridges of his scars into sharp relief. It had been a long time since Wade’s appearance shocked him—it was, he supposed, why Matt’s scars had never even registered—and sometimes, when the light was right, he could still see the beauty of his old face.

He tried to slide out of bed without waking Wade, but he had no sooner sat up than Wade mumbled, “Don’t leave.”

“I shouldn’t have stayed,” Peter said softly. He reached back and squeezed Wade’s shoulder. “Last night was—”

“Our secret,” Wade said. “But I wish you’d stay for a while. Let me show you how fun topping can be.”

“Nice try,” Peter said.

“I’m not kidding,” Wade said, and Peter knew he was not. The offer was tempting. Perhaps too tempting.

“No,” Peter said quickly, standing and collecting his clothes. “I need to go for a run.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'll get comments, so: They had the explicit consent conversation offscreen. (Mostly because consent conversations, while important IRL, are also very boring to write.)
> 
> You can yell at me about it on [Tumblr](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/), though.


	6. November

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time is up for Peter and Matt, in so very many ways.

But mile after mile after mile could not quiet his mind. Matt may have taken marriage off the table—despite everything, it was the church or nothing for him—but they’d promised each other fidelity, and now he’d ruined it. Or had he? His exile had been orchestrated so quickly that they’d never discussed the terms—were they truly separated? Or just faithfully living apart? Was Matt, he wondered for the first time, sleeping with anyone else?

It would make sense, he thought. Matt had been back at work for nearly five weeks. But maybe he wanted something else—someone else.

Peter thought back to that awful night when Matt had pulled down the bookcase—maybe now he wanted to be with someone who had never known what he’d been like before, who would never know how much he’d lost. Or maybe, he thought with a chill, it was the other way around. Maybe Matt wanted to be with someone who knew exactly what he’d lost, in a way that even Peter could not. Someone like Misty. They were both mourning the loss of many of their favorite people, both intimately familiar with the experience of waking up inside bodies that no longer worked the way they used to. It would make perfect sense for that bond to bloom into something more.

_He’s an attorney, dummy. If he said 90 days, he meant 90 days._

Still.

His worries continued to tumble through his mind as he returned home and showered and ate. Finally, after too much debate, he called the only person he could think of who could give him the answers he needed: Karen.

“Hey,” she said, surprised. “What’s up?”

“I know it’s the middle of the day, but is this a good time to talk? Is he right there?”

“It’s fine. He’s in his office,” Karen said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Peter said, knowing he was not likely to convince her. “I just—wanted to know how he was doing.”

“Same as last time, I guess,” she said. “Good days, bad days, lather, rinse, repeat.”

“More good days now?”

Karen was quiet for a while. “You know how hard it can be to tell with him.”

“Yeah,” Peter said. Matt’s inability to make eye contact gave him a natural poker face, which served him excellently in court but not so much with people who cared about him. “Misty’s still—helping?”

“Oh yeah,” Karen said. “She’s been a godsend. Takes him out for coffee every Tuesday, talks him down from whatever ledge he’s standing on that week. Keeps him from feeling too sorry for himself, basically.”

“Where do they go?”

“Oh, no,” Karen said. “I am not stalking him for you.”

“I didn’t mean—” Peter said.

“You have three weeks to go,” Karen said. “Don’t blow it now.”

_I already have._

* * *

The next day, SHIELD filed its official after-action report on the Hominus raid, and Peter began to pore over debrief after debrief in the hopes of finding something—anything—that could either condemn him or exculpate him for failing to catch the terrorist before he hurt Matt. But a week and more than a thousand pages later, he had to concede that there was nothing definitive, not really—just a few breadcrumbs here or there that could possibly have led to a clue but which even now did not seem promising enough to revisit.

So he read it again.

He continued to suit up for his patrols of Queens and Brooklyn as the nights grew longer and colder, setting a punishing pace for his rounds so he wouldn’t have a moment to think or a breath to spare to call Matt and confess everything right then and offer to move the rest of his things out in the morning.

_It might still be okay. He might forgive you. Don’t fuck it up more than you already have._

Nostalgia threatened to swamp him at every turn now, so sure was he that he and Matt were finished. A man in a Mets cap in Bensonhurst would suddenly remind him of their first baseball game together, while the smell of woodfire from a brownstone chimney in Park Slope would remind him of the night they first set up their new grill on the roof. He spotted a man emerging from the subway in Williamsburg wearing the same hipster white-soled black wingtips Matt wore to work, and everyone in New York, he thought, seemed to use the same ringtone he had long ago assigned to Matt’s number, making him instinctively check his phone a dozen times a day.

But it was the smell of cinnamon and tomato and oregano and garlic emanating from a Greek restaurant in Astoria that almost did him in. It overwhelmingly reminded him of the day Matt had taken him on a tour of his favorite law school haunts in Morningside Heights a few months before they moved in together. They’d had tiny espressos at the little Italian bistro that offered open-mic opera nights and then split a decadent slice of something buttery and crumbly and jammy at the Hungarian café a few blocks over and were just leaving Nussbaum and Wu with a half-dozen black and white cookies for later when it began to rain.

They hustled across the street as fast as they could toward the subway station three blocks away but the rain began to pour down in sheets and so they ducked into a tiny Greek joint half-buried beneath the pavement in the basement of an apartment building in the middle of West 113th Street to wait it out. They spent the rest of that soggy afternoon there, splitting bottle after bottle of Bulgarian white wine and baskets of pita and hummus and eggplant salad. They were the only ones in the restaurant, and soon the owners joined them and they talked for hours, sharing childhood stories of New York and Thessaloniki, discussing politics and baseball and literature and love. Eventually their table was filled with food and they were all eating and drinking until they could not eat or drink more, and when the rain stopped, Kostas sent them on their way without charging them a cent. _You’ve given me sunshine today,_ he had said as he walked them out. _Who could put a price on that?_

 _I think that’s the most only-in-New-York thing that’s ever happened to me_ , Matt had said.

Peter had laughed and pulled Matt closer and began to hum “You are my sunshine,” which made Matt laugh in turn. Soon they were no longer laughing at Peter’s joke, just laughing at each other’s laughter, delighting in the silly joy of accidentally getting drunk in the middle of the afternoon with people you never expected to know and feeling that despite everything that was wrong with the world, everything, for just a few moments at least, just might turn out okay.  

Later they’d gone back to Matt’s and made love as a new storm thundered overhead and lay in bed for hours, listening to water pelt the windows as they sleepily traced their fingers over each other’s bodies before they finally drifted off to sleep.

If Peter had to choose a favorite day of their relationship so far, it would have been that day. Well after they’d fallen in love, but just before they’d actually said it, curled up together in the bed in the apartment he would soon call home, not because of the address but because of the man who lay beside him. Everything had seemed possible then—marriage, children, a life fighting crime alongside someone he admired more than anyone in the world.

He almost called Matt that night. The number was dialed, the speech prepared. But in the end he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t give up that dream yet. Couldn’t let go of the hope.

* * *

And then the day came. He slept as long as he could. He checked his phone constantly to see if Matt had texted. He packed up the Jeep, just in case. As the sun began to set, and there was still no word, he couldn’t decide what to do. Just as they had not laid out the terms of their separation before he left, they hadn’t laid out the terms of their reunion. Was he supposed to call first? Was he supposed to wait for Matt to call? And was this even the right date, or had he begun counting from the morning after? Was Matt not expecting him until tomorrow?

In the end, he decided, it didn’t matter. It had to be tonight. He kissed May goodbye, drove into the city, and parked outside Matt’s office.

The lights were still on at Murdock Law at half past six and he could, if he hugged the wall of the building across the street, just barely see Matt and Karen talking in his office. Four years ago today he’d walked into that office for the first time to take Matt’s portrait for a magazine, and his plan was to initiate their reunion there, partly for old time’s sake, but mostly because it was relatively neutral ground. He didn’t want to do this in front of Karen, though, so he headed back toward the apartment, to the Starbucks where he’d first began his vigil three months before.

Happy was parked in his usual spot, and rolled down his window before Peter had even approached the car.

“Today’s the big day, huh?” Happy said.

“I guess so,” Peter said, leaning in. “Thanks for looking out for him. Seriously.”

Happy nodded. “I’ve always got your back, kiddo, you know that.”

Happy saluted and rolled up the window. As he pulled away from the curb, Peter headed into Starbucks to begin his final watch. He claimed a spot at the window, just next to the door, with a clear view of their apartment building’s front stoop.

He had no expectations other than a conversation. There was no telling what Matt needed—what either of them needed—right now, although if he was being honest with himself, what he needed most was Matt’s arms around him in bed. Well. There would be time enough for that, he hoped.

An hour passed, and then another. It wasn’t unusual for Matt to work until 9 or 10, especially if he was preparing for a trial. Peter smiled at the thought.

He’d caught part of one of Matt’s cross examinations once, before they moved in together—he’d been at the courthouse to photograph a new judge for some law magazine—and happened to spot one of Matt’s cases on the docket posted in the hall.

He slipped into the courtroom and sat in the back, just in time to watch Matt calmly and deliberately eviscerate a dirty cop over the course of 50 quietly brutal minutes until he finally broke down and admitted that he’d planted the gun on the jogger he’d shot in the back because someone had called in a “suspicious black man running through the neighborhood.”

Peter had been stunned. He already knew Matt was unflappable in court—he’d watched him testify in the Fisk trial on TV and had never once let Ben Donovan shake him—but he’d never seen him on the other side of the witness stand. Matt’s sunglasses had the effect of compounding his natural reserve, but he’d long ago learned how to work around them to project warmth to the people he cared about. But that day Peter saw for the first time how Matt could also recede behind the blankness of his glasses to terrifying effect, like a great white shark stalking his prey.

It had been terrible and wonderful (and more than a little hot) to see him dominate the courtroom like that—like a SHIELD commando in a navy suit, ruthless and determined and silently, lethally fierce. If Matt was back in court, then maybe the world hadn’t seen the last of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen after all.

“Hey mister,” the barista called from behind him. “We’re closing now.”

It was nearly 10 p.m.

Peter bundled up to cross the street and wait outside on the stoop, and as he did, at the far end of the block, he finally saw Matt, crossing 9th Avenue toward home.

He walked more quickly and confidently than he did the last time Peter saw him—not as much as before, and maybe he never would, but he crossed that street like he owned it, and it made Peter smile against the cold.   _I knew you could do it._

He paced a little as Matt approached, last-minute doubts bubbling up the closer he got. Maybe he should have called first. Maybe he should have waited for Matt to call. Maybe Matt had no intention of calling and would be unhappy to see him. Maybe this would be the last time they ever spoke.

And yet he could not move. Time was up, in so very many ways. Matt’s cane struck the threshold of the stair and he stepped up, close enough to touch.

“Matt,” Peter said softly.

“Oh,” Matt said. He reached out and Peter stepped toward him so his hand would meet his arm. His fingers closed around the fabric of Peter’s coat and the corner of his mouth twitched into a quickly arrested smile, the way he did when he wasn’t sure if he could afford happiness. “Hey.”

“It’s been three months,” Peter said. “I thought we should talk.”

“Of course,” Matt said. Had they ever been this formal with one another? “Come on up.”

But he couldn’t, not yet. He knew the moment he stepped inside he would do anything to stay, even lie about Wade—and he could not allow himself to do that. Matt deserved the truth. “Is it too cold for a walk?”

“No,” Matt said, and Peter could hear the unspoken question in his voice: _What can’t you tell me at home?_

Peter took his hand and looped it under his elbow as he always had, and they turned back up the way Matt had just come. How much he had missed Matt’s touch, his hand sandwiched between Peter’s bicep and ribs. Matt held his arm a little more tightly now, Peter noticed, and he still tapped a little with his cane when they walked together, which he’d never needed to do before. He tried to simply observe the changes without sadness, lest it balloon into pity, but that was harder in practice than theory.

“Aunt May sends her love,” Peter said, to keep himself from dwelling.

“Give her mine, when you see her,” Matt said, and Peter’s heart turned to lead, realizing right then that Matt had no expectation of seeing her again. “I’m sorry I missed her birthday.”

 _You’ll be able to tell her yourself_ , he wanted to say. But Matt could not know Peter’s reasons, which meant he must have reasons of his own, and his heart grew heavier still. “She understands.”

They fell silent after that, some unspoken doom settling blackly between them. They walked nearly a block before Peter spoke again. “I hear you’re back at work.”

Matt nodded. “Almost two months now.”

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away for long,” Peter said, trying to inject a little bit of their lost intimacy into that painfully sterile bit of small talk by playfully bumping his shoulder against Matt’s like he used to do.

Again, the corners of Matt’s mouth twitched, but this time he gave into the smile, that slow cautious smile of his, and Peter melted. “I’ve missed you,” Peter said, because he could no longer not say it. “Like, a lot.”

Matt began to laugh unexpectedly.

“What?”

“When you suggested we walk instead of going home I assumed you were going to tell me you’d met someone else,” Matt said.

_Fuck._

“Ah.”

“It wasn’t—” Peter closed his hand over Matt’s as he searched for the right words. “The first three or four weeks, I was okay, you know? I was giving you your space, letting you work things out the way you said you needed to, and if that was the only way I could help, then that’s what I was going to do.” Even now he could not bring himself to tell Matt how he had followed him for a week, how he had slipped inside the apartment the night Matt pulled the bookcase down. _Coward._

“Karen texted a couple of times, let me know how you were doing, and that helped a lot, but then you went back to work so soon, and I don’t know--I got it into my head that you were going to end this experiment early. So I was just waiting for you to call, and I waited, and waited—” He cleared his throat and paused a moment before continuing. _Get your shit together and tell him the truth._ “So I wasn’t handling things very well, and I was at a Halloween party, and Wade was there, and—"

“And.” Matt let the word hang between them like a guillotine blade.

“And.” _I’m so sorry it was with him._

Matt nodded but didn’t let go of Peter’s arm. He gave a tight smile and shook his head. “I fucked a random woman in the bathroom of a bar a few weeks ago.”

Peter coughed. “A woman?” He began to wish it _had_ been Misty. At least he would know it was someone who deserved him.

“Surprised the hell out of me too.”

“You didn’t realize?”

Matt laughed. “I didn’t expect to want to.”

“Oh.” Peter closed his hand over Matt’s. “Is that--what you want now?”

“I’d rather have you,” Matt said. “What do you want, Peter? Do you want to come home?”

“I want you.”

Matt curled his arm more tightly in Peter’s. “So, let’s go home, then.”

Only then did Peter look up and realize how far they had walked—they had passed St. Michael’s. The night was getting colder and Peter rubbed Matt’s hand to keep it warm as they turned back toward home.

“Was there anything else you needed to tell me?” Matt asked.

“How could you tell?”

“By the way you answered that question,” Matt said mildly.

Peter chuckled nervously—it was a rookie interrogation trick and he’d walked right into it.

_Well, let’s just get on with it, then._

So he told Matt everything, how he’d kept watch during the first week of their separation, how Tony had put a security detail on him to keep him safe, how his spider-sense had drawn him to the apartment the night he’d pulled down the bookcase.

“I wish you hadn’t seen that,” Matt said quietly, flushing bright red and pulling them both to a stop. His back was rigid and his hand was tight on Peter’s arm.

“I know,” Peter said. “I’m sorry I violated our agreement like that. I know you thought you were alone.”

“Yes.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” Peter said.

Matt gave a tight smile and a small shrug. “You know that doesn’t work, right? Telling people what to feel?”

“Fine,” Peter said. “Let me tell you what I feel: _I’m_ not ashamed of you. I’m not afraid if things get hard. I’m still ridiculously in love with you. I still want to spend the rest of my life with you.” He pulled Matt’s arm closer. “And I still need you.”

“I know,” Matt said. “I suppose I owe you an apology, too.”

“For what?”

“For abandoning you these past three months.”

“You didn’t abandon me,” Peter said. “You had a lot to work through.”

“You were hurting too,” Matt said. “Are you still having nightmares?”

Peter exhaled heavily, not really wanting to answer. _But this is the whole point, dummy. You share the bad stuff, too._ “Kind of, yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Matt repeated. “I should have been there for you.”

“You’re here now,” Peter said. He didn’t want this conversation now—he wasn’t ready for Matt to say the things he hadn’t allowed himself to want to hear from him for months. Some day he would tell Matt how brutally hard it had been to wake up from those nightmares alone, day after day for months, but not tonight. Not tonight.

“I don’t know how much I can give yet,” Matt said. “I’m doing a lot better now but I’m not—” He shrugged. “I’m still trying to figure out how to be like this, I guess.”

“It takes as long as it takes, lover,” Peter said, kissing his hand, grateful to postpone that discussion for a while. “I’m not going anywhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to admit the reunion conversation didn't quite unfold in a way I loved, because I was locked into dialogue I'd already published for this scene in [His Heart is a Place of Safety](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15377127/chapters/35690580) and I didn't want to retcon it. So it's much more meandering and repetitive than I would have liked. Hope it works anyway! 
> 
> Please stay tuned for a delicious sexy fluffy epilogue, and find me on [Tumblr](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/) if you like.


	7. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love, sex, unburdening of heavy souls. Everyone's home safe now.

Once inside the apartment, they stood facing each other uncertainly.

Peter reached up and gently took Matt’s glasses off, setting them on the entry table where he always kept them. They had not bothered to turn on the lights but the billboard across the street provided more than enough for Peter to reacquaint himself with Matt’s face—the planes of his brow and his cheek, the curve of his eyebrows, the faint crinkles spiderwebbing through the smooth scar tissue around his eyes. And then finally the eyes themselves—a pair of perfectly matched prosthetic implants, impossibly still and clear. Their stillness calmed him, centered him. When he looked at them he always knew he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

Then he took Matt’s hand and rested it against his cheek so Matt could feel his smile, and kissed his palm.

Matt smiled and touched Peter’s face with his other hand and kissed him deeply. “I missed this,” he said.

“Me too,” Peter said, pressing his forehead against Matt’s. They were both grinning like idiots now, smiling and kissing and letting their hands explore each other’s ears and necks and shoulders and chests. He trailed his fingers along Matt’s cheek, playing lightly with his beard, discovering the difference in texture between the gray and brown. “I like this on you,” he said. “It’s a very ‘hot distinguished professor’ look.”

Matt smiled against his hand. “It’s actually just my ‘I suck at shaving now’ look.”

Peter kissed him again and nuzzled the beard with his nose. Then he reached down to Matt’s tie and began to loosen it, unsure how far Matt wanted to take things—or even how far he could. “Is this okay?”

It was like the first time he’d been here, when Matt first admitted that he was attracted to him. He’d never been with a man before and hadn’t known what to expect, and Peter had had to punctuate every step of their intimacy with a new question: _May I kiss you again? Is this okay? Is this okay? How about this? What about this?_

Matt nodded and smiled. As Peter worked on Matt’s tie and buttons, Matt slid his hands under the hem of Peter’s t-shirt and sweater, running his fingers just beneath the waistband of his jeans.

“What on earth—” Peter asked, pulling Matt’s shirt from his shoulders and turning out his left arm, revealing an ornate Celtic cross tattooed on the underside of his left bicep.

“It’s a long story,” Matt said, kissing him again. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Anything else I should know about?” Peter asked, raising his arms so Matt could pull his sweater off. “Piercings? Brands?”

Matt laughed a little. “No,” he said. Then he rolled his hips a little. “Well, you’ll be happy to see this,” he said, taking Peter’s hand and holding it against his groin. His cock was beginning to harden beneath his hand.

“Well hello, there,” Peter said, working his hand down inside Matt’s underwear. “I’ve missed you.”

“Not as much as I have,” Matt said dryly.

Peter laughed and leaned his forehead against Matt’s chest as he tried to concentrate on unbuckling his belt. His own dick was so excited he was afraid it was going to come on its own, making his hands clumsy and rushed.

“Wait,” Matt said, catching Peter’s hands in his. “You first.”

“Mr. Murdock, you’re trying to seduce me,” Peter said hoarsely.

“I am,” Matt said, taking his arm and steering him toward the bedroom. There, Peter let Matt finish undressing him with aching slowness.

“You too,” Peter said, tugging at his undershirt. “I want to be able to see you.”

Matt grinned and stripped just as slowly—undershirt, shoes, socks, pants, and finally, finally his underwear. He’d regained some weight, Peter noted gladly, but more welcome was his magnificent erection.

“My beautiful man,” Peter murmured.

Matt flushed and briefly turned his face away, perennially allergic to compliments but Peter would never stop paying them because one day, he hoped, Matt would believe him.

But instead of arguing, Matt smiled and rested his hands on Peter’s shoulders. “My turn to look at you,” he said, lightly running his fingers across his collarbones and down his arms, one at a time, inspecting every muscle, every joint, every inch of skin with his fingertips. Then he worked his way around Peter’s back, counting vertebrae and pausing to work out a knot beneath a shoulder blade with his thumb before his hands made their way down to his hips. His fingers flew over one buttock then the other, then down one leg all the way to the ankle—Peter did not like having his feet touched—and then up the other before finally working their way across his abdomen.

It was Peter’s turn to blush now—there was something almost unbearably intimate about being studied so methodically, being appreciated in such a deliberate and sustained way. He could barely breathe beneath Matt’s touch, and when Matt finally, finally directed his fingertips toward Peter’s cock, Peter groaned with pleasure.

“Just as you remembered it?” Peter managed to ask.

“I’m not sure,” Matt said archly. He swiftly knelt so he could take Peter’s cock into his mouth. He let his tongue play idly up and down the shaft and around the tip, tasting the salty damp that told him Peter had been waiting for a very, very long time for this. He kissed and then licked Peter’s balls and blew cool air lightly across them and Peter shivered involuntarily and grabbed Matt’s shoulders for balance.

“You’re making me weak in the knees, lover,” Peter groaned.

“Good,” Matt said with a sly grin, before taking Peter back into his mouth. Peter’s hips bucked as he did—it wouldn’t be long now, so Matt wrapped his arms around Peter’s thighs and back to hold him steady while he worked, licking and sucking and probing the tiny slit on his head with his tongue until Peter came with a shouted string of obscenities that made even Matt blush.

Peter let himself sit heavily on the bed and pulled Matt down onto the mattress beside him. They lay down together, Peter spreadeagled on his back, Matt curled up beside him, propped on one elbow, his other arm resting on Peter’s chest, his fingers idly tracing across Peter’s face.

“I love you,” Peter said exhaustedly.

“I love you too,” Matt said, kissing his forehead.

Matt was still semi-hard, his erection waxing and waning gently against Peter’s hip, ready to go, but not in a rush to get there. Peter curled his hand around Matt’s cock and began to lazily work him to attention.

“Do you want to try?” he asked tentatively. “Or I could just use my mouth.”

“I want to be inside you,” Matt said, gently turning Peter onto his side. Peter reached into the nightstand for the lube and passed it back to him, and Matt began to stretch him open. He went slowly, kissing Peter’s shoulder and ear and neck as he worked.

“I’m ready,” Peter said finally. “You?”

“So ready,” Matt said, carefully easing himself in. Peter laughed in delight—Matt was as hard as he’d ever been—and reached behind him to grab Matt’s lower back as he pulsed his muscles to guide him further in.

Despite their hunger for one another, they moved slowly at first, reacquainting themselves with each other’s bodies and rhythms. Matt threaded his arm up beneath Peter’s, clasping Peter’s back to his chest and offering him a finger to suck and bite on as they moved.

“We should really get you a bit or something,” Matt murmured, when Peter broke skin.

“Okay,” Peter said, though he would have agreed to anything just then. Matt was all the way in now, the pressure of his cock against Peter’s prostate almost unbearably delicious, and Peter groaned happily and then gasped.

The sound of Peter’s hitching breath was all it took for Matt’s hips begin to buck against him, slapping against his ass with increasing urgency.

“Harder,” Peter begged. “I want to feel you come inside me.”

“Working on it,” Matt said with a breathless grin, thrusting harder and harder, sending Peter soaring through pleasure until finally he groaned and Peter felt the hot jet of cum flood through him, the delicious, sloppy pressure of it, and the sweeter pleasure of Matt’s cock slowly going soft inside him as he collapsed happily against Peter’s back, the weight of his boneless arm heavy and comforting around him.

“Okay, now I really love you,” Peter sighed.

He felt Matt smile against his shoulder and then kiss it, pulling him close so he could feel Matt’s heart beat against his back. This was his favorite feeling in the world, lying like this. He could live the rest of his life in this moment and regret nothing.

Eventually, after a lifetime or two of cuddling, Matt gently slid out and made his way to the bathroom. “You need anything?” he asked.

“Just you,” Peter said, curling up with a pillow to watch him. It was strange how many little ways that Hominus had marked Matt’s body without so much as touching him—even his gait. Matt was moving more confidently around the apartment now, but he still had to feel his way around, and his steps were still shorter and more careful than they used to be, with just the slightest of shuffles so he could catch himself before stepping on something. Peter wondered how long it would take for him to recognize those new footsteps as Matt’s.

He forced himself to observe these things without judgment. _This is how he is now,_ he told himself. _There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just different._

_Aside from it being my fault we can’t fix it._

Though Peter hadn’t wanted anything, Matt made his way into the kitchen afterward and returned with two beers anyway.

“Cheers,” Peter said, taking his.

“Cheers,” Matt echoed.

They sat in bed side by side as they drank, just as they had the first night they’d slept together, and had a hundred nights since.

“Matt, I need to apologize for something,” Peter said “It’s been weighing on me ever since your diagnosis.”

“It’s not your fault,” Matt said quickly. “I know what you’re going to say. The Sokovia Accords. The supersoldier ban. It’s not your fault.”

“But it is,” Peter said. “I was—”

“A teenager when Tony roped you into that mess,” Matt said, threading his arm behind Peter’s shoulders and pulling him close. “And even if you’d said no, there were 173 nations that had already signed them. You couldn’t have stopped them from becoming law. You only would have made life harder for yourself.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t understand how flawed they were until they hurt someone I love,” Peter said. “I’m sorry you’re paying the price for that.”

“I’m not paying the price for anything except doing my job,” Matt said. “Hominus did this. Not you.”

“I wish we’d caught him in time.” Peter’s voice could barely support the words, and they came out hoarse and small. “I just wish—"

“I know,” Matt said. Unvoiced but unmistakable in the following silence was the second half of his thought: _Me too._

“I wish I knew how to make it better.”

“By making it mean something,” Matt said after a moment’s thought. “I don’t know if this happened for a reason, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use it to—what’s the Jewish expression for it? Repair the world?”

“Yes. _Tikkun olam_ ,” Peter said. “To put the broken pieces of the world back together again.”

“Right,” Matt said. “We use this—what we learned from this—to do that.”

“I like this ‘we’ you speak of,” Peter said.

“It’s as good a place to start as any,” Matt said, kissing the top of his head and drawing him closer. “Welcome home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Please insert "Spider-Man: Homecoming" joke here.)
> 
> I didn't intend to do it, but this now perfectly sets everything up for the next major fic. Which I still need to write, so be patient. But yeah, I'm pretty proud of myself for (accidentally) doing it.
> 
> In the meantime, I lurk on [Tumblr](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/) if you want to visit me there.


End file.
